


The Knight in Narglatch Skin

by Ars_Arpadok



Series: The Clone Who Came in from the Cold [1]
Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-17
Updated: 2013-05-17
Packaged: 2017-12-12 03:36:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 16
Words: 70,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/806720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ars_Arpadok/pseuds/Ars_Arpadok
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Amnesiac Clone-Commando Gregor fights to return to the Republic and maybe for something more.</p><p>A full version (with interludes).</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> In deference to my beloved sibling I am posting a complete version of this story here so she may download it to her kindle. 
> 
> For everyone else please enjoy the un-cut version of the Knight in Narglatch Skin whether you want to download it or not!

Now:

 

His blood pounds through his skull with a rush like a salt storm, scouring everything before it and leaving behind a patina of adrenaline and the stannic iron fuzz on his tongue that he remembers more clearly than the faces of his pod-brothers. His muscles clench and twitch in tiny micro-spasms. He had meant what he said to the diminutive colonel.

He had been born for this; bred for this. Every nerve in his body pulses with the long denied pleasure of the fight. The white-grey haze of his life to this second is gone; washed away in a gorgeous tide of red and aggression. He feels the abrasive crunch of windblown salt on the armor plates of his back as the shuttle lifted higher. Ten seconds, fifteen at most and it would clear the range of the droids' blasters. He needs to buy them those seconds. He aims and fires without thinking or even consciously seeing, lost in the electric sensation of battle.

Yes, whispers a feral version of his own voice in his head, those, shoot those containers. Rhydonium.

Gregor realizes he is smiling as he squeezes the trigger.

Rhydonium is stabilized for transport by combining the relatively inert saline form with a gel accelerate. When it explodes it does so in fiery gobbets. It sticks to whatever it touches; the oxygen feeding the flames until they burn hotter than a blast furnace. 

One of the super-destroyers is turned, briefly, into a walking torch, its headless body picked out in violet fire as it lurches forward before the heat sets its fuel reservoir alight, vaporizing it and everything else in a three meter radius. The dust on the ground begins to burn: then the rock beneath. 

The Rhydonium and the silicate substrata, liquefied by the heat, runs over the edge of a sunken loading platform like a waterfall in hell. The particulates in the air begin to burn and for a moment the salt haze dissipates in the wind created by the blaze. In the instant Gregor can see this awful city. 

He starts to laugh but then the fire eats up his air and he coughs. His hind brain makes him take another breath but the heat sears his tongue and closes his throat. He tastes the sweet-sharp chemicals of the burning Rhydonium, like a peat bog mixed with a fuel refinery, spiced by unimaginable heat. The battle-haze keeps him calm and firing even without air for another seventy three seconds. Then the red haze goes black and sears the consciousness from his body.

 

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

\--wait your return. The fragment of a phrase buzzes annoyingly in his brain. It whispers over his face and lands twitching under his left eye. He raises a hand to brush it away. It's not a phrase. It's a brine fly. He watches it buzz up and away to the ceiling, silhouetted for a moment in the horizontal shaft of lift from round dormer high above. The air is dusty, as always, but cool, almost cold against his skin, tasting more of iodine than salt and nothing at all like fire.

 

Gregor sits up, ignoring the stinging pull of the skin across his hands and forearms. He must have gotten too much sun, wandered home and fallen into one of the strange fever-dreams that he often has when he's worked too many shifts. But these aren't his walls. His bunker of an apartment has cheap permacrete sheeting on the walls. These, as best he can make out in the semi-dark of the room are rubbed tadelakt, pigmented a rich blue-green; the room makes him think of being submerged in a tropical sea. The mattress under him is the same thin industrial grade matting he sleeps on but this one has been padded with several cushions and bolsters. The thin blanket is also softer and finer than what he normally used, woven with cream and brown chevrons.

 

Clearly, this is not his apartment and yet he feels no alarm waking up here. It's familiar somehow, safe. He stands and then sits quickly back down again, yanking the blanket across his lap as a small, irritated seeming female ducks through the curtained doorway. She's speaking over her shoulder to someone rapidly, in a language he doesn't know. A breezy laugh sounds from the other side of the curtain followed by the scuff retreating footsteps. The irritated girl huffs and turns to look at him, jumping back half a meter when she realizes he's awake. Gregor frowns, remembering in an unpleasant rush whose house he's in and finds his voice, though it seems hoarser than he remembers it.

"Thena, what am I doing here?"

She pales, black eyes narrowing.

"Recovering."

Her temper brings out the Ocsin accent, making her roll both 'r's in the word. Gregor feels a familiar, pleasant twinge in his gut at the sound of but ignores it as the rest of his memory returns.He feels the surface burns across his neck and hands and grins wildly.

"So I wasn't dreaming."

He ignores her hissed 'what' too. Slowly he reaches up to run a hand over his cropped hair and along his jaw. The hair is disheveled and his chin is roughened with some re-growth but he's a long, long way from the shabby dishwasher he had been. He's a clone, a commando, a captain. He still can't remember everything but the fragments he does have are less confused. He jumps up, wrapping the blanket around his hips, shoving away the dizziness and all but skips around the room. He remembers not to skip at the last minute because he thinks it's probably undignified thing for a commando to do. He settles for pacing instead. The sound of her voice stops him short

 

"I liked it." Now it was his turn to say 'what.' 

Thena is staring at him oddly, pressed into the corner of the room nearest the door, the one farthest from him. She seems pale, even for her.

"The beard. I liked it. Why did you shave it off? Was it those Mandos? Did they cut your hair too?"

"The who?" 

He starts to walk towards her because she's speaking so quietly it's hard for him to make out what she's saying. He stops after one step when she flattens her palms to the wall and flicks her eyes toward the curtained doorway. She's scared. He doesn't know why but he's got a nasty suspicion it's got to do with him. He stays where he is and repeats his question. She swallows and continues, voice still frustratingly soft and a little shaky.

 

"The Mandalorians, the people who gave you that armor and the guns, did they get you in some scheme to steal that shuttle?"

"I didn't...they weren't Mandalorians. It was a Republic Colonel... I didn't really catch his name. I'm a clone. A clone commando. They needed to get back to Courascant and they couldn't do it without my help. The little colonel got cut off from the rest of the squad. I got him out and held off the clankers long enough for them to get away."

An awful thought occurs to him.

"They did get away didn't they?"

It was more difficult to read an Ocsinin's expression than it was a human's; the completely black eyes hid a great many expressions and they had fewer facial muscles than base-line humans. Thena, however, was only three-quarters Ocsin and her face is fairly expressive, black eyes or not. At that moment she is frowning at him in a way that, combined with her bizarre nervousness, pricks his temper.

"Well did they?" 

She flinches. He hadn't meant to snap like that but the past day --or was it days--has left him feeling raw.

"Yes, the shuttle got away." She whispers, eyes narrow and angry. It's an improvement over scared. He takes a couple of deep breaths and asks as calmly as he can with the happy-adrenaline still doing victory laps through his brain:

"Where's my gear?"

She hesitates, chewing on her lower lip. He barely stops himself from stepping closer to her. His rediscovered, semi-feral commando side is growling that he should get in her personal space and make her tell him. Can't let these civvies steal my armor, my skin, again, hurry up and get it back, come on, what's the hold up? He chokes that part of his brain into submission. Shut-up idiot, you scare her too badly she won't give up anything and she's two thirds ready to run as it is. The inner commando grumbles but accedes the point. Gregor asks her as nicely as he can but there's still an edge to his voice that makes her press her fingers against the wall again.

"Where is it, Thena?" She snaps at him, eyes wide, lips pulled back from her slightly-sharper-than-human teeth.

"Downstairs. In the kitchen. I had to hide it. Borkus was sniffing around here for you."

"Did you tell him I was here?"

"I did not. What is going on Gregor?"

She stares at him, plainly bewildered, scared and now she sounds hurt. His gut twists again, with guilt this time. He doesn't want to listen to it. He wants to get back to that cold clarity of the fire fight. This is too complex; a minefield of conflicting emotions. How is he supposed to exist like this? How do people feel so many contradictory things at once? He's glad to be alive and whole and knowing who he is, afraid that Borkus or his even more loathsome brother-in-law would somehow find and stop him, worried about how to return to the Republic and his proper life. And now Thena's been added to it all.

He doesn't know how to untangle the mess of emotion that has him wanting to simultaneously hide from her, impress her, fuck her senseless and ignore her until she goes away and stops threatening his equilibrium.

Instead he grabs his skull in his hands, breathing as deeply as possible through his mouth; avoiding the warm female smell of her in the tiny room that's distracting and uncomfortable and fantastic all at once damnit. He can't have her here. He has to remember the rest of who he is and get off this force-forsaken rock and he can't concentrate on that if she's here being distractingly pleasant smelling, not to mention scared which is badly making him want to protect her. That she seems scared of him is helping even less. He makes himself act calm, drops his hands neutrally to his sides, makes his voice steady and politely commanding.

"Can you get me my body glove? I can't get down to the kitchen in a blanket."

She inhales audibly through her nose and doesn't move. It looks like she's working herself up to say something. He cuts her off before she manages to form words. Cuts her off before he totally loses control and either throws himself at her feet and begs her to stop acting like he's going to hit her, or he grabs her by the arms and shakes her until she does as he says; before he does both.

"Thena please."

His voice is gentle, pure non-threatening-dishwasher and occasional short order cook-Gregor rather than tough-no nonsense-commando CC-5576-39. She's still for another moment then turns and leaves the room on almost soundless feet. Gregor stays as he is but allows himself a sniff at the fading scent of her now that she's safely out of arm's reach.


	2. Chapter 2

Two Months Ago:

It was late for lunch, an hour or two after Zenith which meant that it was too hot to cook or eat, or do anything but lie in the dark and half-sleep until it cooled back down. Yet here they were, half a dozen customers. A Dug, two Bothans, and three Weequays (walk into a diner). Gregor couldn't remember how the rest of the joke went or if it even was a joke.The back of the diner was so hot he felt like his brain was starting to poach. 

Borkus was, of course, gone for the afternoon. He might come back that night or he might not. Apparently a bevy of traders had been blown into their humble (horrible) little port and were trying to off-load everything they could. Gregor had no idea why anyone would want to take the low grade spice and even lower denomination Hutt coinage available around here in exchange for anything of value but these offworlders apparently did. Borkus was cross-eyed (more so than usual, which was almost impressive) with greed.

 

That must be who these customers were, offworlders. He flipped a sizzling slice of spiced protein brick on the flat top and tried not to let sweat run into his eyes. Only an offworlder would order hot sliders at high-Zenith. They were going to regret the heavy fare when they stepped out of the cooled dining booth, but that wasn't for him to worry about; unless they vomited inside the diner. Gregor grimaced at the thought as he cut meal-board into bread like slices. The kitchen door swung open, its sagging lower hinge making it catch and drag on the tile with a tell-tale squeak. Even so Gregor startled and nearly cut himself.

 

Laying the knife down carefully he turned to see Thena Kuora, the half-bred Ocsinin waitress standing with her upper body canted into the open refrigeration unit.

"Borkus is going to be angry if he catches you wasting power like that," he said to her pleasingly rounded backside.

Thena straightened and turned toward him, still holding the refrigerator door open.

"Only if you rat me out."

She smiled impishly at him and he felt his already flushed skin get momentarily hotter. Then Thena turned back to the depths of the 'fridge. When she emerged again she was holding a half wrapped bag of semi-frozen vegetable matter, closing the fridge she held it between her wrists and sighed. He almost asked what she was doing but the smell of lightly singed protein brick tore his attention away. Swearing under his breath he flipped the four slices off the griddle and onto the meal-board.

"Yum, really makes you wish you had appetite doesn't it?" Thena asked from much closer to his side than she'd been moments ago. 

He jumped again and swiveled his head to the left. She was less than half a meter away, vegetables now held against her neck, frowning down at the crispy protein. She looked up at him and smiled. Something felt like it moved laterally in his chest.

"Oh well, hand me the sauce. You know what, make that both sauces."

He did so without a word, though he felt like he should have contributed something to the conversation. He watched her squeeze concentric rings of first the unidentifiable pinkish sauce and then the "spicy" grey-green one onto the sliders. Her hands were so much smaller than his; pale and soft looking with little dimples where her fingers joined her palm and fascinating dips that vanished and reappeared in time with the movement of her wrists.

"There." He looked up when she spoke, hoping she hadn't noticed him staring; kind of hoping she had somehow at the same time. Thena, however, was grimacing at her work. Not amillimeter of the protein was visible under the sauce. She looked up at him expectantly. He scratched the back of his head where the hair was matted against his collar by sweat.

"Um…"

She huffed, annoyed at his non-response.

"Well it's better than nothing."

"Oh, um, yeah. No. I mean, yeah it's better, but, uh, did they order spicy ones?"

She shrugged.

"Sweating will help them cool off."

"Really?" She gave him a sideways look. 

He felt like an idiot.

"So I hear Gregor, so I hear." 

She turned and made her way back toward the refrigerator, opened the door and tossed the vegetables back inside with unnecessary force. He winced.

"Sorry."

"Hmm?" 

She was retying her hair with her back to him. He tried not to be distracted by the lush blackness of it as she pulled it through the elasticized tie. He cleared his throat and pressed on, his skin going hot and cold by turns as he did.

"I mean I know you don't sweat, Ocsinins I mean, don't sweat. I didn’t mean to say you did, if it upset you…"

It was a miserable attempt and he gave it up, staring glumly at his boots. Thena laughed, actually laughed, not nastily, like Borkus did when Gregor fumbled something; like he'd said something funny rather than hideously stupid. He looked up. 

She had turned around and had stopped with two of the three plates of sliders balanced on one arm. She was laughing hard; eyes scrunched almost shut, mouth wide. It was a lot of motion for her normally impassive features, it made her look younger and honestly pretty rather than wryly harassed as she usually did. She stopped, wiping at her eyes.

"Oh, oh I am too tired, that wasn't even funny."

Gregor's diaphragm felt like it dropped four centimeters in disappointment. Then she smiled at him again and it jumped straight up. (He wished his internal organs would knock off the acrobatics, hewas starting to feel queasy)

"I'm only three pints Ocsi so I do sweat, with the right incentive."

She wiggled her eyebrows and then tried to wink roguishly. The effect was slightly lost when a pair of mating brine flies chose that moment to land on her nose, causing her to squeak and nearly drop the sliders as she batted them away. Still, Gregor blushed to his boots at the idea of a sweaty Thena.

She cleared throat and he glanced up. Her free hand was outstretched. He realized he was holding the last plate of sliders. He grabbed the sauces, slathered both on one handed, far less neatly than she had, and passed her the plate. She balanced it carefully before stepping away, fingers brushing lingeringly along his. They were soft and very cool from the vegetable bag. She smiled one more time.

"Thanks Gregor. Turn off that stupid griddle before you fry huh?"

He turned to do as he was told. When he looked up again the kitchen door was stuck halfway open. He could see Thena crossing the cramped dining room, setting plates on tables and avoiding one of the Weequay's questing hands. His chest felt odd as he watched, tight and somehow jagged, like something had torn inside it and was fitting poorly together. He crossed absently to the door way and kept looking. Noted the way her hair swung from where it was tied, the way her legs pressed and pulled against the cheap fabric of her uniform skirt (it pulled other places too but he always tried not to stare too hard at those). He saw the contrast of her white skin and all-black eyes in a way that was somehow different than it had been for the past ten months. Everything was sharper, brighter and unsettling.

 

Then the Dug started shouting for him to close the feking door, he was letting the hot air in. Gregor grabbed the flimsy thing and near wrenched it off its hinges as he complied. He piled all of the unwashed plates and cups in the sink and washed them so vigorously that sweat began to drip from his nose and soak into his beard.

 

He didn't see the plates or the grey suds. He didn't see Thena either, her strange, compelling black eyes, her pale skin and impish smile (which was a bit crooked and coupled with her mouth being too big for her face made her seem kind of lopsided but in an oddly nice way). He wouldn't let himself see her. He stared into the middle distance and washed everything by touch, finding himself mildly surprised when he noticed that the sink was empty.

 

He refused to think about Thena but even as he wiped down every surface of the kitchen with easily twice as much care as Borkus ever showed he couldn't help but mentally prod at the strange, ragged place inside his chest (like a hole in his gums where a tooth was missing but internal, intangible; as if that made any sense) all ragged edges and sharp twinges of a sensation that wasn't quite pain.


	3. Chapter 3

Now:

 

The kitchen in Beerkin's "Hotel" is spotless. Nobody ever cooks there because none of the "guests" stick around long enough to order room service. Despite the half-hearted attempt at riad chic, which has to have been Beerkin's ex-wife's idea, it's an in and out establishment, pun very much intended Thena thinks as she ghosts across the courtyard toward it. She's hidden Gregor's frankly terrifying armor in one of the pristine ovens. It took her and Mi Syung almost an hour to figure out how to get it off of him. It's singed all over the back and there's salt dust encrusted on the front from where he fell face down when he passed out during the fight.

 

It weighs a ton, probably less than if it were made of metal she reasons, but it's still damned heavy. It takes her three tries to heave the mesh bags, two of them, out of the oven and onto the floor with as little noise as she can manage. It's barely dawn and nobody else but maybe Mi should be awake yet.It's not going to hurt to be extra careful though.

 

She's stashed his guns, there were five of them how many guns does one man need? Evidently Gregor needs five, and a number of grenades in a pouch strapped to his waist that she's afraid to even think about, even now. She's stashed the whole mess of weaponry and explosives in an enormous decorative urn up on the little used fourth floor landing near her room. She was simply too scared to haul them all the way down to the kitchen yesterday after she and Mi barely managed to get his armor stowed without being caught. 

She kept his combat knife though, twenty-two and half centimeters long, black, with a serrated back edge and a handle covered in the softest, tooled, golden-brown hide she's ever seen. He had it strapped to his upper arm. She's wearing it around her upper thigh, a comforting weight under her long red skirt.

 

She doesn't want to risk digging through all the armor here and making noise that might attract Beerkin. His room, the biggest and coolest during the heat of the day, is just down the hall and a short flight of stairs. Thena sneaks across the kitchen to the entrance by the narrow back stairs and listens for all she's worth. No sound. No one's up yet.

 

Quick as a shadow she's back to the armor and hefting each bag across her shoulders. The straps crisscross her sternum like bandoliers. She has to walk hunched a bit forward like an old woman to balance the weight. By the time she's up the four flights of stairs she's panting. No wonder Gregor had all those muscles, just moving in this stuff, let alone fighting, would build anyone up.

 

She pauses at the top of the stairs to catch her breath. She thinks she's being quiet but Gregor hears her, or maybe he was listening out. Either way he's suddenly next to her. He had always moved quietly but now he's so silent it's scary. He doesn't say a word, just lifts first one bag then the other off her shoulders. He's incredibly gentle about it, untangling her hair where it's gotten caught in one of the straps, smoothing the collar of her dress down where it had ridden up. It's like her Gregor's suddenly back. Her gentlemanly, sweet, timid man who was totally unlike any other male she's come across before. But she can see the outlines of his armor clearly through the bags that he’s carrying like they weigh nothing as he ushers her back into the room and she knows she's lying to herself again.

 

She pulls the curtain tight across the doorway wishing it were really a door so she could close it. She's not sure which side of it she'd want to be on though. But there's no door and no choice. Instead she sits on the floor with her back to the wall, knees to her chest and watches a man she thought she had pegged sort through armor, his armor. He does it with a cold, professional efficiency that makes her pathetically grateful she had hidden the weapons elsewhere. How could she have been so wrong about him?

 

He finds the body glove and shucks his improvised wrap. She tries not to stare. She'd known he was muscular, had spent some time intimately getting to know a number of those muscles but she's never had a chance to look at them, at him, in the broad daylight. Maybe if she had she wouldn't have been so surprised when he suddenly went gunslinger. No dishwasher or short order cook, alive or dead,should have that many scars or be that aggressively ripped.

 

You didn't think his build was such a bad thing a few weeks ago when you needed it. Shot a voice in her head that always sounds suspiciously like her mother, the one that points out when she was being stupid. Leave me alone you harpy. The voice subsides but the statement stays, because it's true. She hadn't thought of Gregor as worrisome until recently. Recently,when he started giving little hints that maybe he wasn't the biddable slab she'd thought, when her feelings started getting the better of her. She feels the nasty, judgmental mother part of her brain stir again and jumps of that particular logic train in a hurry.

 

Gregor finishes working his way into his body glove and sits on her bed. It does very little to hide his physique, aptly named garment the body glove. His occupation of her bed, given how he's currently dressed and the reason for his being here in the first place, is distressing on an entirely other level. He doesn't say anything for a while, just sits there looking at her and that in and of itself is unsettling. She can count on one hand the number of times Gregor had openly stared at her. It's just another reminder of how much has fallen apart in the past two days. Somehow the idea that Gregor, of all people, has been keeping secrets this big makes her angry. It gives her a little courage, her anger, and she stares back at him. Finally, Gregor sighs.

 

"Would you for the love of fierfek please stop cowering over there and talk to me?"

"I am not cowering."

He cocks an eyebrow and she has to admit that he's right. Sat on the floor, knees to chest, certainly seems to be the opposite of 'not cowering.' It takes a second or two but her pride finally asserts itself and she stands up and walks over to the bed. She still sits as far away from him as she can manage but it's a smallish bed and thus a pyrrhic sort of victory.

"Well, what did you want to talk about, your surprise Republic friends, the fact that the space port's in ruins or the state of Borkus's face?"

She manages to get something like her usual bite back in her voice but the facade's a lot thinner than usual. It's enough for Gregor apparently because he gives her a flash of a smile.

"That's better. I thought you were scared of me or something."

I am she thinks. But she stays quiet. He sighs again and runs a hand over his short hair. It's pure Gregor, he even tries to twist his fingers into it and pull the way he used to when he was frustrated. But there's not enough now and he drops his hand.

"I wasn't lying to you. I'm not lying to you. I am a Republic soldier, a clone commando. I...I lost my memory after a battle and somehow Borkus found me and brought me here. He's been concealing this," he motioned to his armor "from me so I couldn't remember."

"But now you do."

She doesn't mean to sound sad when she says it, doesn't know why she should feel sad for force sake, but she does; but she does. Gregor doesn't notice.

"Yeah, yeah I do. That colonel, little thing, how he got to be a colonel...anyway...he told me. He saw me at the diner, well behind it really, and he called me a clone. I thought he was crazy at first but then he came to my place and showed me. There's a whole army of men like me who are fighting for the Republic."

"Like you? Like you as in they're clones?"

He nods vigorously, seemingly missing the confusion in her voice.

"Yeah, well, not just like me. I'm a clone commando, elite."

 

He pauses and Thena is so struck by the fact that this is Gregor, despite the armor and the crazy story. The violent stranger who blew up an entire landing platform is missing. She can't stop herself from reaching for his hand.

 

It's a mistake. He goes still, rigid, stares at her hand on his like it's an alien life form he's not sure is poisonous. She's stubborn, refuses to let go of him, grabs onto his hand with both of hers now.

 

"Gregor, how is that possible? Have you ever seen a clone? The Grand Army of the Republic is droids, just like the other one."

He's still staring at his hand in hers, his voice is very soft.

"What about the armor? What about what happened at with the shuttle?"

 

He's weakening. Thena sees her opening and goes for it as hard as she can.

"I've never seen a clone but I have seen a Mandalorian. That's Mandalorian armor. Maybe that's what you were. Maybe you got hurt bounty hunting or something and that's how Borkus found you and he lied to you because he's Borkus and he's a kriffing liar and a scumbag and he takes advantage. That colonel, or whatever he really was, he must have lied to you too."

"Why would he do that, the colonel?"

 

He sounds so lost and young when he says that. Thena wants to forgive him for scaring her on the spot, wants to patch everything up between them. Sweet, naive Gregor, hard to believe he's really a bounty hunter; but she can't deny the evidence of her own eyes, the armor, the exotic weaponry, the suddenly re-emergent combat prowess. Maybe that's why the Mandos dumped him though, he's too sweet, probably wouldn't vape children or something. She reaches out to touch his shornhair, it's still as soft as ever.

 

"Because you're too..."

He leans into her hand for a second and she thinks everything is somehow about to be okay. He looks up at her, eyes wet; hurt.

"I'm too what? Stupid, trusting? What?"

He's angry suddenly, hard and angry again. She drops her hand from his head and tries to pull back. He grabs her lower arm in an iron hard fist.

"Well, what am I? What do you think I am? What?"

 

He's shouting now, dragging her closer to him by her wrist. His face is contorted, the stranger's. She's struggling mindlessly against his strength; trying to get her hand out of his because he's hurting her, badly. She pulls uselessly, flushing blotchily with pain.

 

"I...I don't, I didn't. Please Gregor. You're sweet, you are trusting. You're hurting me, please."

Her voice cracks. He looks down at her wrist in his hand and drops it suddenly, she hisses as the bones and tendons expand back into a normal shape.

"Oh, oh fierfek Then I am...I'm sorry," he chokes out.

 

He reaches for her and she flinches away; an involuntary reflex. He flinches too, his skin taking on a nasty grey tone. She's massaging her wrist, the bruise is going to be ugly. It's already forming livid and blue in the shape of his fingers. He stands up.

 

"I...I have to go."

"Where?"

He's crouched down by his armor and won't look at her.

"I have to get back to the Republic."

"Greg--" He doesn't let her finish.

"You're wrong Thena. I'm sorry I got angry. I am so sorry I got angry and hurt you but you are wrong. I am a clone. I am a soldier of the Republic and I have to get back. I have a duty and I've been here for so long...too long."

 

If Thena had been human she'd cry, tears for her pain, the pain in her wrist and the awful, growing lump in her chest. But she’s too Ocsinin and hasn't got tear ducts.

"How will you get back?"

 

She doesn't mean to say it. She just wants him to go and get it over with so she can start rebuilding around the new hole in her heart. She can't let him though. He shrugs, buckling his armor on smoothly and about a hundred times faster than she had been able to get it off of him.

"I don't know. I'll find a ship, steal one if I have to."

"Is that what soldiers of the Republic do? Steal?"

"If we have to. I'm a commando we do what is necessary to complete the mission."

He sounds like he's reciting somebody else's words. It's insane. She wonders if he's insane, does amnesia lead to dementia? She thinks she read that it does, or maybe it was the other way around. She tries not to care but she's already failed. The stupid, emotional part of her that ran off with Charise years ago is back in full force and it wants Gregor to back, crazy or not.

"But Gregor..."

He holds up a hand and stands upright. He's fully armored, helmet tucked precisely under his arm, its frightening hash marks visible even through the salt film.

 

"Thena I have to go. Now. Thank you for...for everything you've done for me but it's...it has to be like this. Where are my weapons please?"

 

She wraps her hands around her upper arms, squeezing so hard she knows she's going to bruise there too. Gregor stands like a statue. She sighs and stands up too, sees movement behind the curtain and tenses. Gregor sees her do it and steps smoothly between her and the door, crouched, ready for a fight, helmet clasped in one hand to use as a weapon. He never gets a chance.

Three blasts of blue energy hit him simultaneously. The curtain bursts into flames. Thena screams and jumps for him, catching him as he falls. He's too heavy They crash to the floor together and she feels something in her foot crack as his pelvis lands on it. She screams again and suddenly the room is full of Borkus and a pair of hired Gran spice-heads; triple-pupils dilated until their eyes look as black as hers. They're giggling like school girls. So is Borkus. It's quite possibly the worst thing Thena's ever seen. Between that and her foot she feels like she may vomit.

 

"I tell you," Borkus snorts "I tell you you'd never get off this planet. You're still mine, clone."


	4. Chapter 4

Two Months Ago:

 

Borkus was in a good mood and he was sober (soberish). It was enough to make Gregor nervous (more nervous than usual). The boss had come in an hour after sun down and bought sliders and jawa juice for the house. He had even magnanimously offered to prepare the sandwiches himself. The droid server, 021B, had been run so ragged handing out plate after plate of food to the suddenly packed house (word of generosity and/or suckers spread faster than salt dust in Pons Ora) her hip servos were starting to spark.

 

Gregor knelt next to poor shaking, smoking TooBe, who had collapsed onto one of the counter stools after the crowds finally realized that they had to pay for the second round and headed out. He poked at her hip socket with a power spanner. She burbled unhappily to herself.

 

"Has this been bad for long TooBe?" He asked.

"Oh, days hun. I thought that I could just head over to Banda's for that discount oil dip but I was wrong, honey. Don't cheap out on yourself, you'll regret it."

Gregor nodded. TooBe carried on her one sided conversation about joints and salt corrosion as he worked. It was almost soothing listening to her scratchy, tinny voice. He realized she'd asked him a question.

"Hmm?"

"I said where's that girl? She said she'd be here by ten to take over."

"What time is it now?"

"Ten thirty honey. I wonder where she's got to? It's not like her to be flakey, especially after I did her this favor and said I'd cover the first half of her shift."

"What?"

If TooBe could raise her eyebrows she would have. Gregor didn't much like be looked at condescendingly by a droid but he gritted his teeth and waited her out. TooBe couldn't stay quiet for more than a minute anyway. She beeped loudly after less than fifteen seconds and carried on.

"She was supposed to be on from seven to sunrise but she came to me today, this morning, just before Zenith, and she asked me to cover for her until ten. Said she had something to do."

Gregor frowned, though he wasn't sure why. TooBe was right, it wasn't like Thena to skip work. Quite the opposite really. She tended to jump on double shifts, sometimes triple. He squeezed the oil canister he was holding to TooBe's hip a little too hard; lost in thought. She trilled.

 

"Ooo, careful honey. Oh, oh wait, never mind. Mmmm, you can do that again if you like."

 

Gregor guessed that she hadn't been kidding about the cheap oil. After another few seconds of fiddling with her hip Gregor screwed his courage up and asked TooBe the question that had been bothering him for the past five minutes. He tried to sound disinterested, if the droid worked out that he wanted information she would never shut up.

 

"What did she have to do, Thena I mean?"

"Didn't say. If you ask me though I bet it's a date. She's been acting funny for days now. I bet he's rich too, she's always going on about how she needs more money."

 

Gregor's throat went tight. But, he reasoned it was really none of his business. He concentrated on TooBe's chassis giving it one more quick adjustment with the spanner. He stood up, wiping his hands on a bit of rag.

 

"I think that's probably enough. Does the joint feel better TooBe?"

"Mmm, yes it does hun. Much better. You have got the touch."

 

Gregor was a bit at a loss as to how to respond to that but TooBe spared him the embarrassment by leaping off the stool (her hip must be feeling better for her to be that spry) and all calling out in her best short-order voice.

 

"Thena Koura, you chag. I hope he was worth it honey because you owe me after tonight."

 

Gregor felt like someone had prodded him with an electro-spanner as he glanced up. He'd seen Thena out of the hideous uniform Borkus made her wear before but she looked different; short skirt, shorter even than the one she wore at work, black blouse, not tight but perfectly cut for her body. Her skin looked smoother, paler and oddly shiny. Was she wearing makeup? Gregor thought so, her lips were redder and her eyes looked even bigger than usual. Where had she gone looking like that, and who with? He felt an odd twinge in the back of his head; the world went a bit yellow-green for a moment and an unpleasant warmth crept up his hands. Then Borkus appeared from the back.

 

"Ah, Thena, Thena, Thena my girl. You look lovely eh? Lovely."

 

He wandered over to her mostly steadily (so much for sober); arms outstretched like a beloved uncle at a family gathering who wants a hug. Thena was standing frozen with a slightly panicked look on her face. Gregor took an involuntary step toward her, she glanced at him but didn't move. Borkus tottered up and got his hug (he hugged her anyway, she mostly stood board-stiff and seemed to be holding her breath). When he disengaged Borkus patted her cheek hard enough for her to flinch.

 

"You're a good girl, a good girl. Why don't you take tonight off, busy, busy tomorrow, eh?"

She stepped back and crossed her arms over her chest.

"I'm fine to work tonight. And I thought I was closing. And shouldn't you be home?"

Borkus's smile turned ugly.

"Oh, oh you tell me what to do in my place? I'm doing you a favor, letting you work here. Half a dozen girls I could get to replace you."

Thena stood her ground.

"Not tonight you can't."

Borkus snorted, then started to laugh his usual, repugnant laugh.

"Yeah, yeah but maybe tomorrow I do and then you'd have to do more for Beerkin than just dance."

She narrowed her eyes.

"But if you do fire me you won't get your cut will you?"

 

Borkus opened his mouth to respond, then closed it, then opened it again like some loathsome amphibian casting for insects. He never did find the words he wanted. Instead he threw his hands up and snarled, shoved by Thena, and vanished out the door into the night.

 

The silence in the diner after he left lasted more almost a minute. It was probably some kind of record for TooBe. Finally, when Gregor realized that they must all look ridiculous standing there staring at eachother like brained grox, TooBe gives an impressed trill.

 

"Honey you have got some circuits standing up to the boss like that. You watch that mouth or he will fire you. I've seen it before."

Thena gives her a rueful sideways look.

"Thanks TooBe but he won't. I'm worth twice as much to him now."

"What's that mean hun?"

"I'm working over at Beerkin's too, starting tomorrow. Borkus gets a cut of my wages, it's like a finder's fee or something. He fires me Beerkin won't give him a brass obol."

TooBe trilled again.

"So that's where you were! You be careful about taking that job girl, I hear bad things."

Thena glared at the droid. TooBe raised her hands in mock surrender.

"Okay honey, whatever you say. I'm done for tonight. I'll see you later."

She marched out the door without so much as a wobble from her bad hip.

 

Gregor didn't know what to say once she was gone. The diner was empty and it was going to be several hours before the pre-dawn crowd stopped in with late night munchies. Thena glanced down at her feet, up at the wall behind his head and then down again. She started to pull at the hem of her skirt and stopped.

 

"Well, " her voice was breathy and odd sounding, like she was trying to be lighthearted.

"I'm going to get changed. Hold the fort for me okay?"

"Yes ma'am."

 

It was out of his mouth before he thinks about it, clipped and strong. Thena cocked her head and pulled her eyebrows together as she looked him over. She didn't say anything though as she walked past him to the back; brushing his arm accidentally as she passed. She smelled like stale smoke.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

The rest of the night passed quickly. They got more customers than usual, people sniffing around in vain hope of more hand outs mainly, but some of them stayed for a bite to eat or a mug of something warm. It probably helped that Thena smiled about a four times as much as usual. Between that and the makeup she looked pretty damn good, Gregor had to admit, as he watched her cajole a hesitant Bim into another cup of tea. But there was something off about her. He couldn't name it for a long time but then it came to him. She was being too chipper, too happy. Nobody else noticed because they didn't know her but he saw her smiles and realized that they were as false as her poreless skin and red lips.  
He wanted to ask her about it, ask her why TooBe was so concerned about this new job at Beerkin's, ask her what Borkus meant when he prodded her about dancing but the steady flow of customers kept him in the back until well after closing time.

 

He propped the kitchen door open as he finished the last of the dishes, watching Thena count out the register as he did. She wasn't smiling anymore. It was hard for him to tell under the layer of pigment on her skin but he thought she looked flushed.

 

"Kriff."

He nearly dropped the cup he was drying when she swore. He found himself out of the kitchen and beside her before he realized he'd moved.

"What, what's the matter?"

She startled, clearly not expecting him to be so close.

"Make some noise will you?"

 

She sighed and reached up to untie her hair before she ran her fingers along her scalp. He caught another whiff of stale smoke and wrinkled his nose slightly. She didn't notice, was too busy pulling the hair back up into a messy tail. Gregor watched every movement of her hands through it but found that he wasn't as distracted as usual by her hair.

 

"I lost count. Stupid till."

"Are you okay Thena?"

"Hmm?"

She was carefully counting the money again.

"Are you okay? You're acting, well...weird."

 

She didn't answer him for a long time as she sorted through the bills and coins then marked each denomination into the count sheet before locking the till box and sliding it into the safe under the counter. She turned around to lean against it, fingers wrapped tight around the flaking surface.

 

"I took a job at Beerkin's. That's where I was tonight."

"Yeah, you told TooBe. I heard."

She dropped her chin and looked up at him, pursing her lips into a line.

"It's not a waitressing job Gregor."

He didn't follow for a moment. Then he did. The makeup, the clothes, the smell on her; he got it now. So that's what Borkus had meant. It made him feel a little lightheaded to realize it.

"Oh."

She sighed.

"It's just dancing. Just a couple of nights a week. I don't even take off my clothes, well, I don't take off most of them. That's for the twi'leks and the...you know the pretty girls."

"I think you're pretty."

It was out of his mouth before his brain registered what he was going to say. She grimaced.

"Thanks...thank you Gregor, um...look is there anything else you need to do in back becuase I want to leave. It's been kind of a long night."

"I haven't mopped."

She sighed again, dramatically, and tipped her head back to look at the ceiling.

"Gregor, Borkus wouldn't notice you didn't mop the floor ever again. Come on. Let's go."

Gregor didn't know what to say to that so he nodded.

"I'll get my coat."

"Good man."

 

She followed him into the back, waiting while he pulled the kitchen door shut. She hadn't bother to change out of her uniform he noticed as he pulled his patched jacket on. She stood shifting from foot to foot clutching the bundle of her clothes, her audition clothes he thought with some distaste, in front of her.

 

"All good?" she asked in the false cheerful voice she'd been using all night as he finished buttoning up.

He stopped, hand on the lights and looked down at her. She was standing very close to him, a third of a meter away, maybe less. She was looking down, he could see the stark white of her scalp through the part in her hair. The smell of smoke was fainter but still enough to make him uncomfortable.

"Thena."

She didn't look at him. He waited for a minute or more.

"Thena."

Her head shot up so fast she nearly hit him in the chin. She was wearing an awful fake smile as she looked at him. Normally he'd glance away rather than hold eye contact but he was too unbalanced by what he'd found out tonight, by how the knowledge was effecting him, to remember to be uncomfortable. He looked down at her until the smile wavered, then wavered a little more, then vanished altogether.

"Are you sure you're okay?"

She nodded slowly before answering.

"Yes. I am. It's, it's a little rough there but I'll be fine."

"Rough?"

She shrugged.

"I mean there's security and stuff so it shouldn't be a problem."

"Security?"

"Yeah, you know, big guys who tell the drunks to keep their hands to themselves. And could you stop just repeating what I say already?"

He ignored her waspish tone.

"Who does that, provides security?"

"I don't know, some Aqualish guy. He's a scary mother so he's probably good at the job."

"Just him?"

She shrugged again.

"I think there's a few others but I didn't see them. Beerkin mentioned that there was security but it was sometimes shorthanded."

Gregor ground his teeth. She wasn't taking this seriously at all. He'd gotten into it a couple of times with drunks who grabbed at her when she was fully dressed waiting tables. He could only imagine how much worse they'd be if she were dancing. Something went off in his head. He looked at her again.

"What's it take to be on this security detail?"

"I don't know, being big and scary?"

"How about just big?"

"What are you talking about Gregor, are you going to go be a bouncer?"

"Well, I could use the extra money and if an Aqualish can do it..." She laughed a little, as he'd meant her too. He felt a little proud of himself.

"I don't know Gregor. It's not like here."

"I could do it, maybe only a few nights a week. When you're there."

His voice sounded strained when he said that, higher than it should have been. She was giving him an assessing look and seemed about to say something else. Instead she turned and opened the outside door, giving him no choice but to shut off the lights and follow her out.

 

She fumbled with the keys for several seconds in the dawn half-light. He watched her, hands buried in his pockets to hide them from the morning chill. A salt-crane barked overhead and he looked up, trying to catch a glimpse of the bird. When he looked back Thena had finished with the lock and was standing closer to him than she had been inside; almost touching. She was looking up too, not for the bird, at him, with a ferociously serious face. He opened his mouth to say something but her hands were on his jacket pulling him down toward her the instant before her mouth pressed against his.

 

It wasn't a good kiss. It wasn't anything like those lurid holonet dramas that TooBe likes to put on the flickering diner vid screens during the late afternoon (for ambiance honey, people love this stuff). Gregor knew perfectly well from those programs that he was supposed to make the first move and it was supposed to be in some romantic spot with maybe a waterfall or a sunset or something. There was a sunrise at the moment but neither of them could see it in the dank alley with the overflowing trash pile. He was also supposed to be suave and know what he was doing, be assertive and passionate but not too needy, kind of cool and aloof.

 

At first he stood like a statue, then he fumbled like a drunk then he just gave up on suave and cool and kissed the woman in front of him as best he could (which pretty much meant following her lead because, really, even though he wanted this, he had not one clue what he was doing).

 

She didn't seem to mind and he would have been grateful if his brain had been working properly. She let him flail a bit before she showed him what to do with his tongue, how to push in with his lips and withdraw so the other person followed you back, when to use teeth and when to just angle your face opposite the other person's and work your mouth against theirs. It took awhile for them to even out the kinks in technique but Gregor hardly minded, though his pants started to get uncomfortable the more she wriggled up against him.

 

He pulled back first (cool, suave, well done) and stared down at her, trying not to pant into her face (which would have been neither suave nor cool). She gave him that bent little smile and he was lost again, had to kiss her again, (he was proud of being more assertive this time). She stopped him after a few seconds by running her hand up his chest, between the unbuttoned halves of his jacket (when had that been unfastened?) Her voice is low and breathy, like she had been running. He was stupidly pleased that she seemed almost as wrecked as he felt.

 

"I...I think your place is closer and...and uh...less crowded."

 

He blinked, not quite following, thinking that this couldn't be right; that he couldn't be doing this for several seconds. His head might not have been entirely on board but his body made up for it. He felt himself smile (attractively he hoped, or at least not like a gormless child offered candy) and nod even as his common sense tried to put the brakes on the situation. His libido and some animal instinct ganged up on his higher thought process and chased it into a far corner of his brain where it couldn't cause trouble.

 

She smiled again, wider, lopsidedly lovely (especially now that the false color had rubbed off her lips) and took his hand. He didn't even think it was odd that she knew exactly where they were going.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Up next is the un-cut interlude, you've been warned.


	5. Chapter 5

He was idly glad that he’s remembered to clean up his apartment before going to work tonight. There was only one dirty glass and plate next to the sink and his bed was made and neatly folded into the wall. Tidy room or not he was beginning to wonder if he wasn’t going about this all wrong.

They’d walked back to his place sedately, hand in hand sure, but no wild making out up against walls, no fumbling for the keys as they tried to strip each other in the hallway. They’d all but strolled back through the dawn which gave Gregor far too much time to think about what he was doing; gave the voice in his head too much time to argue its case. Now that he was in his apartment with a woman who made his ache and behave in strange, stupid ways all he could do because of that stupid voice and the doubt it brewed up in his brain was lean against the door; frozen, watching her walk around the tiny room. She paused here and there to touch things, the bit of salt scoured rock he’d found one day that looked very much like an eopie, his two book slates that he hardly had time to look through, his spare shirt hung on a wall peg. Then there was nothing else to occupy her and she turned back to him.

She stood in the middle of the room and looked at him, an unspoken question on her face. Gregor was surprised to find that he could read her expression easily, even when she was using her Ocsinin face to hide things. He could see that she was curious about something, she wanted him to see that, but he could also tell that she was a little nervous, excited maybe. That was what got him, what put his feet in motion. That was what got him within arm's reach of her. He was nervous and maybe a little excited, so was she; he wasn't totally alone in this new ocean of...something.

He stood a little bit off from her and reached for the band holding her hair up. He almost pulled on it but stopped himself, worried that he might yank on her hair; hurt her. She blinked, realized what he wanted, almost smiled and let down all that black hair that he'd been wanting to touch for days.

He'd never touched anyone's hair but his own and he wondered if it was just the novelty that made it seem so soft; unimaginably soft and silky and cool even in the heat. He brushed it gently between his fingers, running lengths of it between them; weighing it in his hands, stepping closer to smell it. She smelled, unsurprisingly, like salt and there was a trace that unpleasant, acrid smoke but it was being quickly overcome by something else; something far more pleasant. Under the salt and over the smoke was a warm, moist scent like the ground under trees after a rain, but sharper too and almost metallic. It coated the back of his throat as he inhaled. It made his fingers bend around the nape of her neck; made him very aware of his own body and hers, the differences between them, where they touched and didn't; where he wanted them to touch.

She was breathing deeply but faster than before, her hands curled around his biceps, squeezing sporadically. He glanced down, found her leaning forward with her chin cocked to one side, eyelids half closed, lips parted, head swaying a little on her neck. He had stopped playing with her hair and was just watching her. She realized gradually; resurfaced and looked up at him.

Her seemed somehow blacker, like they were absorbing light, like they were two pieces of starless night cut into point-ended ovals and fixed inside her. He felt like he could have tripped and fallen into the void of her eyes and he realized he wouldn't mind a bit if he did. She looked up at him and he didn't care if he seemed cool or desperate or naive because it didn't matter to him anymore. He kissed exactly the way he wanted to, open mouthed and deep. He picked her up, arms tight around her waist as he lifted so her head was level with his and tried to kiss her as deep as her eyes looked to him, into oblivion and a black forever.

He dropped her to the ground suddenly. She looked surprised and about to pout until he reached for the catch of the bed; then she laughed a little breathlessly and toed off her boots. He pressed the release too hard. The bed dropped out of its little cubby like it was coming out of orbit. Thena jumped a little at the percussive bang of it hitting the floor and then giggled; continued what she started. She unbuttoned the cheap fabric of the uniform quickly and wiggled out of it; dropped it to the dusty floor with an elegant flick of her wrists like it was a silk robe. He stood next to the bed staring as she reached for the clasp on the deep red bra.

"Wait."

His voice sounded deep and foreign to him. She stopped, hands halfway behind her back and looked at him, waited for him to say something else. He couldn't, instead he reached for her again, letting his fingers play along her ribs and down her spine to her full bottom, which he cupped and used to leverage her onto his lap as he sank onto the mattress. She got the hint and straddled him, her matching wine red panties straining a little as she spread her legs.

His mind shut down then. Even the little niggling voice that had been pricking at him about how he shouldn't be doing this shut up. Gregor could not think about anything except what a contrast the cool of her skin was on his burning palms, how that hot, salty, earth smell was now stronger than anything in the room; how it was searing its way into his brain.

He ran his hands over her thighs, loving the give of them, the width and the soft skin over the muscle; how they were different from his. She was pushing off his coat, he had to relinquish first one leg and then the other to let her get it off but he did, eventually. Then she was pulling his shirt out of his pants and he had to let go of her completely, even her mouth which he hadn't been more than about a centimeter away from in the past five minutes. When he finally emerged from under the fabric she was reaching for the clasp of her bra again. He let her take it off this time.

He was fascinated by her breasts, by the way they hung; the sloping top and the mounded underside. Her nipples were broad and soft when she first slipped the bra off her shoulders but they grew hard and pointed as he looked at them. He watched the way the flesh undulated softly as she breathed, growing paler as they sat. She shifted a little on his lap, accidentally rubbing against his crotch and Gregor saw stars for a moment. He crashed back to Abafar when she suddenly made a move to get off of him. He grabbed her ass, digging his fingers in just a little because it felt so very nice. She cleared her throat uncomfortably and he looked up. She was frowning. He felt suddenly terrified that he'd screwed everything up, that they were going to stop.

"They're not...I mean I know they're not very big..."

Gregor was perplexed. It must have showed on his face because she pulled her eyebrows together unhappily. His hormonal fog cleared a little more and he realized that he was supposed to do something.

"What?"

It wasn't the right thing to say. She began to struggle a little to get off of him. He tried not to get completely distracted by the way she was rubbing on him, the way her breasts bounced a little because there was something about this encounter that he needed to fix. She pushed against his chest a bit harder but with only one hand, the other one was across her chest.

"You mean..." it seemed impolite somehow to come out and say it, in spite of everything they were doing. He settled for reaching up to touch them instead. He gently pushed her arm out of the way and slipped his hands over her breasts. And then mentally kicked himself for not doing that earlier because if he'd thought her ass was nice to touch he hadn't understood what he was missing up here.

The flesh in his hands was soft and yielding and smooth. It just filled his palm and when he flexed four fingers along the rounded underside; the hardened nipple rubbed against the heel of his hand,which felt generally fantastic. He tried shifting his hands to the side and found he could use his thumbs to trace the contours of each breast as he did so. He brushed against the nipple and watched it get harder, curious he rubbed it laterally with just the tip of his thumb; it got harder again and a little longer too. Thena gasped. He glanced up, embarrassed that he'd gotten distracted again when he was supposed to be reassuring her of something, if only he could remember what.

Her eyes were huge, almost totally round and her mouth was hanging slightly slack. Her face was pale, the slight moisture breaking out on it catching the light from the high window. He grinned.

"Hey, you're sweating."

She blinked at him owlishly, bared her teeth in something that may have been a smile and jumped forward, knocking him backward onto the mattress. She ended up straddling his lower ribs. He sighed happily as she leaned forward and made a grab for her breasts again. She squealed a little as he got back to carefully investigating what happened when he tried different combinations of fingers and pressure against her nipples. Then he had a totally bizarre, irresistible idea. He sat up a little and put his mouth on the left one. Thena mewled oddly and lost her balance. He sputtered.

"I'm sorry...oh, are you okay? Thena? Thena?" She rolled onto her side, back pressed to the wall. She was laughing. He frowned.

"Oh, was that...I mean, was that not right?" She giggled again and then coughed, trying to get herself back under control.

"I take it that you don't think my tits are too small?"

It was the most unreal statement he'd heard in a long time.

"Who says that?" She looked down, tracing non-sense patterns on his green sheet.

"You, know, people...Borkus and, uh, his brother-in-law and...I've heard it before. Males tend to...like...bigger ones."

Gregor was gob smacked at how wrong people could be. He didn't have words to express it though so he just stared at her, hoping that she could read his disbelief. She wouldn't look at him. He was at a complete loss until a helpfully errant cough of cold air from the whimsical air-conditioning unit made her shiver, gooseflesh breaking out along every inch of her skin; every inch. Gregor's primeval male instinct had had enough. He somehow pulled Thena away from the wall and rolled on top of her in what felt like a single, fast motion. She stared up at him with wide, surprised eyes and he suddenly had words.

"I don't know who you've been talking to but..." it seemed like the appropriate thing to lean down and kiss the top of one breast for emphasis,  
"they..." he kissed the top of the other to be fair;  
"have..." he licked the nipple, she bucked a little  
"strange..." he licked the other one to make her buck again,  
"standards." She pulled his face up for a very nice, wet kiss as he finished.

"Okay," she said in a high pitched, quavery voice when they stopped kissing several seconds, or maybe minutes, later. She leaned up to run her tongue along the tendon at the front of his throat and his toes curled. She began to bite lightly along his neck and clavicle and he the tingling up and down his spine and arms and legs threatened to knock him over. He locked his elbows and bent his head down to give her more surface area to work with. She obliged him and upped the ante by starting to suck of the skin just behind his ear. He heard a strange, choked moan come out of his mouth and his pelvis involuntarily drop to press harder against her.

Thena yelped in surprise and pain. The sound snapped him out of his haze so fast he was dizzy for a moment.

"What, what's wrong?" He blinked rapidly, trying to see what was wrong. She bit her lip and looked sheepish, mumbled something.

"What?"

"Your zipper...on the trousers. It's kind of...rough and, um, sharp?"

He looked down at where he had been grinding into her seconds ago and realized what must have happened. He felt his face get hot.

"I'm sorry, um...I'm, are you alright?" She was grinning as she nodded.

"Minor hazard. You should take your pants off to avoid a repeat." He glanced at her again to be sure she wasn't really hurt. She squirmed languidly as he pulled his pants and socks off in record time. She giggled again and hooked a leg over his now bare calf and proceeded to trace her way from back of the knee to buttocks and back down again. The combination of her cool, soft skin against the hair of his leg and the way her pelvis tilted to let her move like that was almost as good as the necking.

He realized he was being kind of passive in all of this as she ran her hands over his chest, toying with his nipples for a few amazing seconds before stroking her way down his back, around his hips and towards... Gregor did lose his balance when Thena wrapped her fingers around his cock through the thin undershorts he was still wearing. He barely managed to roll towards the wall so he didn't just flop down on top of her but then all he could do was lay on his back like a beached fish and try to remember how to breath.

Thena didn't seem to want him to remember. She leaned down to kiss the center of his chest and he felt her smile, he couldn't get his eyes open for some reason to look at her at that moment. She stroked him again and it was suddenly imperative he gets the damned shorts off. He hauled his eyes open to slits as his hands scrabbled for the waist band. Thena got the hint and pushed his clumsy fingers away to help.

Or not. Definitely not, she wasn't helping at all. She was peeling the damned things off of him by centimeters. She brushed her fingers over his thighs and his cock a little bit as she drew them down over his buttocks. She took a moment to run her fingers along the place where his legs and his ass joined up and he keened. She pulled the shorts down his legs and he had no idea why it should feel so insanely good to have someone touch his kneecap or his kriffing ankle but it did and she was evil and she was trying to kill him.

It was a miracle that he managed to survive the ordeal of the shorts but she had worse in store. She slithered back up his legs in a reverse of what she'd done seconds ago but now it was her being dragged against him rather than cheap synth-weave. The contrast between the wiry patch of hair at the very base of her pelvis and her ludicrously silky skin and the volcanic, wet heat between her legs as she pressed splay-legged against his thigh was insane. It was totally implausible that such sensation existed.

She was leaning forward, his eyes had once again glued themselves shut, but he felt the muscles move in her legs, felt her hair slip forward to tickle his hips, felt her mouth opening against the head of his rampant cock. That couldn't be right.

Gregor forced his eyes open and realized that he wasn't imaging anything. She had her lips against him, was opening her mouth to take him in deeper. He shuddered violently at the sudden wet swirl of her tongue and almost screamed. It was too much.

Somehow he sat up, pulled her upright and away from his cock, got her back straddling his chest, which was a whole other problem because he could feel every molten fold of her skin against his ribs as he gasped for air but it was manageable for now.

"You didn't like that?"

Why did Thena sound hurt when she said that. He tried to focus. She wasn't frowning but her lower lip was pushed out a bit as though she were about to start.

"No, I mean...yes. I...just...too much."

She smiled down at him wickedly and ground her hips against his ribs a little more.

"Oh. Okay then."

She bit her lip and narrowed her eyes, obviously trying to come up with some new, horribly wonderful thing to do to him but Gregor realized that he was a great believer in turn-about being fair play. He reached back up for her breasts, squeezing and tugging until her head fell back on her neck. He relinquished his hold on the left one to slide an arm around her back feeling a primal male sort of satisfaction when her protesting noise became a breathy groan as he sat up and started using his mouth on her again. He switched between each breast, rolling his tongue around, biting gently which made Thena shiver in the most delightful way. He even took a moment to bite and suck on her neck; though that had unintended consequences as he had to slide her down his body and into his lap to get to her throat.

If he'd thought her mouth had been hot, or that the feeling of the wet skin between her legs on his chest and thigh had been outrageous, the sensation of it on his groin was ungodly. His mouth had to stop what it was doing so he could gasp for air. He sort of worried that Thena would use the opening to torment him more but she seemed as wrecked as him. Her mouth was hanging open and she was panting, skin luminous with sweat. She ground against him and they moaned in harmony. He pressed up into the slick skin involuntarily and felt her fingers grip his shoulders hard enough to bruise. The blood pounded through his head demanded he do that again. He did. She met him at the apex of it, pressing down as he went up. His head swam and a spiraling tightness appeared at the base of his spine. He thrust again and felt the tension inch towards his testicles. If he could only do that once or twice more it would reach them and he suddenly wanted to feel that more than anything he could remember.

Thena shuddered and sighed his name and something else. He growled a little and tried to find the right angle to grind his name back out of her mouth. She gasped and said the second word again. It was 'wait.' He didn't want to do that, didn't want to stop the slick, hot rubbing that was getting him closer to that promise of...something by the second. But Thena was pulling away, shoving herself off of him unsteadily. He was too distracted to effectively stop her and suddenly he was alone on the bed, his erection damp and cold. He blinked at her, confused and starting to feel a little angry at having his...something taken away.

She was rummaging clumsily through her discarded clothes. What was she doing? Was that all there was? If so why was he still so frustrated and hot and why wouldn't she come back over here so he could touch her more? He tried to say that, any of that, but managed only to produce a slightly pathetic, quizzical grunt. She straightened up, several plastoid wrapped squares in her hand.

"Protection." She announced.

He blinked, confused. She toddled back toward the bed, dropping three of the squares on the crate next to it and tearing open another one. He watched her carefully, wondering if this meant he got to touch her again. She was pulling something translucent and white-ish from the plastoid, dropping the wrapper carelessly next to the bed. It suddenly smelled of synth-plast, like the gloves he wore when the health inspector turned up and Borkus wanted to make a good show of it. But that wasn't a glove. Where was she...oh.

It was something like when she'd pulled off the shorts but not really at all. She stroked him and rolled the glove-thing over the head of his cock and down all the way to the base. It felt fantastic, not as good her crotch but pretty damned wonderful anyway. That she gave his balls a playful squeeze once it was all the way down was just a lovely bonus.

Then she was swinging her leg back across him, pushing him down onto his back and re-positioning herself on top of him. It wasn't quite as hot as before. The sheath over the length of him blocked out some of the sensation but that wasn't so bad really. He didn't feel as out of control. She rose up a little on her knees as he watched, disappointed that she was taking all that wet, heat away again. He reached for her hips to stop her but she wasn't trying to pull away, she was reaching under her for his diamond hard cock and putting it...Gregor groaned and gasped and started panting and she lifted him up inside of her. He was suddenly intensely grateful for the synth-plast sheath and its slight deadening effect. Without it he was certain he would go insane. This was a thousand times better than the surface grinding they had been doing before.

Thena sank down slowly, head falling backward in time to her motion. He wanted to watch the tendons stretch and the alluring way her hair fell back along her spine but the pressure and the heat inside her was distracting him. His hands tightened on her hip, started to pull her down but she exhaled sharply and pressed a hand into his chest.

"Wait, slow...give me a minute."

He didn't quite understand but in that second he couldn't have denied Thena anything. He waited, let her slide agonizingly down his shaft until, what felt like hours later, the wiry hair between her legs brushed his.

He was suddenly entranced by the stark whiteness of her skin against her hair, the glow of moisture on it. He watched a bead of sweat slide over her clavicle and roll down her chest toward her nipple. He never saw it actually reach its destination because Thena suddenly breathed in and the muscles inside her tightened along his cock. His eyes rolled backward in his head. Then she moved, rose up a little bit on her knees before dropping slowly down onto him. His toes curled. She did it again, moving further up and further down. His tongue curled. Then she rose up until she was almost completely off of him and suddenly dropped all the way back down. His eyes snapped open as she whimpered. Her head was tossed back again, hair sticking slightly to her body, mouth open, smiling, eyes closed. She moved her hips back and forth a little making both of them shiver. She tried to move vertically again but he was fairly sure that he would die if she did that just now so he tightened his hold on her hips and encouraged her to rock a bit more. Her head came up as he did that.

She opened her eyes and kept smiling down at him. He smiled back and decided that, since things were going so well, it might be time to be a little more active. He thrust his hips up. Her head fell back again. The stretch of her spine made the her internal muscles pull in new directions. He tried again. She ground down on him and moaned. The spiraling tightness was back in his spine and working its way rapidly back toward his groin. He thrust a third time, harder. Thena gasped and writhed on top of him. He was about to try it again when she suddenly leaned back more and snaked a hand between their bodies.

He almost thought she was going to reach for him but realized she was pressing her fingers against her own skin, right at the apex of where her body touched his. He could feel her fingernails rubbing little ghost-circles against his skin but he didn't think that she was trying to touch him. Her internal muscles began to tighten again but Gregor clenched his teeth and tried to ignore it in favor of working out what she was doing with her hand.

He reached forward curiously, brushing the same spot her fingers did when he saw an opening. She let out a high pitched hiss and suddenly snapped forward to look at him. He withdrew his hand, or started to but she grabbed his wrist and pulled it back forward.

"Do that again."

Her voice was rough and he found that he very much wanted to do whatever she told him. He rubbed the wet skin again. She keened. He rubbed more. Her muscles clenched down on him. He moaned. He rubbed in little circles. She gasped rhythmically, hips moving forward and back in time to his touch. The tightness in his spine was throughout his groin now. It was pulling on his testicles and slowly climbing his cock.

"Harder. Please. Gregor."

Thena ground out between panting breaths. She reached down to guide his hand to where she wanted it. Her muscles were like a vice around him now. He pressed and crooked his fingers. She said his name again, raggedly. His hips were moving on their own now pushing up into her rapidly and hard. A weird, lucid part of his brain wondered if he might be hurting her but it fell silent when she said 'please' for a second time. He let her press his fingers into the wet softness between her legs and he rubbed where she directed. His vision was starting to flash with multi-colored lights and he wheezed. There was suddenly too little air in the room.

Thena was letting out a breathy, high, continuous wail. He was sure she couldn't clench down on him any tighter. But then she did. She went rigid and the pressure on his cock became too much. He tried to yell in alarm but nothing came out. Then her muscles spasmed and he found his voice long enough to growl her name. The building pressure exploded making him piston up into her body. His hands held her hips in a death grip as she writhed and shook. Everything went blue and gold and green in flashes behind Gregor's eyes. He suddenly wanted to open them, to see Thena as she came apart. He pried his eyelids apart as the intensity of the color flashes started to fade. Seeing Thena though gave him another jolt; her hair in a mad tangle across her shoulders, chest and back, her face both relaxed and intense, eyes screwed shut, breast bouncing enticingly as she rode him.

She stuttered a groan, shuddered a final time and collapsed across his chest. They were both breathing hard, as though they'd been running. He wrapped his arms around her back as she quaked through the last of her release, shivering himself whenever her internal muscles gripped his softening cock. Eventually, she stilled. He brushed the sweat matted hair away from her face, running his lips along her forehead and temples as he did. She cuddled closer to him. Their breathing slowed back toward normal. She mumbled something into his chest.

"Hmm?"

He wasn't really interested, more wanted to cuddle and sleep but it was probably rude to ignore her after...that.

"Right incentive."

She repeated. He caught on after a second or two and chuckled.

"It was okay then?"

She tried to slap his chest but her hand was still rubbery, she settled for flicking him with the slightly damp backs of her fingernails.

"Fishing for compliments."

He grinned, probably stupidly, but he didn't care at the moment. She sat up a little, causing his flaccid cock to slide completely out of her. She made a little, disappointed noise and his grin got bigger. She reached down for him and he tensed but she only peeled off the synth-plast covering and tossed it in the direction of his waste bin. She wriggled back against him, sliding more against his side than back on top of him.

They lay quiet for some time, listening to the building settle around them and the occasional noise from the street. Gregor was starting to doze off when the AC unit clacked alarmingly loudly. Thena jerked into a half sitting position and glared at it when she realized what had woken her.

"Stupid thing..."

She lay back against him, wrapping a pale leg across his. His body let him know that it liked that very much. His hands began tracing up and down her back. She purred a little. He leaned down to kiss her again, slow and sweet but with an unmistakable implication. She was smiling lopsidedly at him when they stopped.

"Wow mister. I guess I should have done this earlier."

He smiled back.

"Well you do have three more of those things."

She cocked an eyebrow.

"Haven't you ever seen a condom before?"

It seemed more prudent to kiss her than to answer that question. Even as they started the newly discovered male-female dance again the strange other-voice inside him was asking him to stop and think about this. It was telling him it wasn't too late to turn back, very quiet now, but still, unmistakably there.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is where the graphic violence starts. Emphasis on graphic.

Now:

The room is dark and empty in the way that rooms which are usually full of people seem empty; not just empty but abandoned and haunted by the sounds of the missing throng. The windows are high up on the walls, six, maybe seven meters. They let in huge, flat shafts of light, hazy with floating dust. The intensity of the light from outside means it must be Zenith, just past maybe. Gregor tastes salt and an acrid, furry hint of sewage on his tongue and knew he had to be in the lower quarters of Pons Ora, somewhere near the waste recollection units. The air is slightly moist on his skin and cool which means there's an aircon unit running. He listens for a minute but can't hear it. It's either very well made or this building is bigger than just the one room. He’s slumped forward uncomfortably but he doesn't move yet. He needs to work out more of his surroundings before he tips off anyone who might be watching that he’s awake.

 

The floor, that he could see, is grey, scuffed fiberplast. He’s seated on it, legs splayed in front of him, back pressed into something that rises out of the floor, something curved with a lip at the height of his shoulders. They've left his armor on him for some reason; maybe they couldn't work out how to get it off. He doesn't have his bucket on, nor can he see it from his current angle but he's still wearing everything else. He hears a swish of something moving though the air to his right; a door, metal, heavy, double hinged. There's a new scent of old grease and spilled beer. It's enough. He knows where he is, the smells, the cheap floor, the thing behind him, he remembers.

 

CC-5576-39 sits up against the stage in Beerkin's "club" and takes full stock of his situation. They've chained his hands to the footlights on the main stage, extending his arms full out from his shoulders to do so. The cuffs are hard but not too tight on his wrists, as though whoever locked him into them wanted to be sure he had room to move for some reason. His feet are tied together with rope but otherwise free. There's nobody else in the room at this second but his chains rattle as he tests the bindings. There are noises from the kitchen and Borkus appears through the swinging doors a moment later. He steps throughas fast as he can manage, letting the doors shut quickly behind him but Gregor can tell there's another several people in there.

 

Borkus shuffles towards him grinning like a lunatic, face bruised purple and green where he fell on it, bare arms striped black from the cables. He's favoring his right side too so he must have injuries there from the fall as well. Gregor files that information away for future reference.The Sullustan stinks of spice and cheap, strong liquor.

 

Gregor pulls experimentally at the shackles again, confirms they're good; the chain, however, is not. It's actually two chains, a short one attached to the cuffs extended by a thinner silvery one that's been wrapped around the light-wells five or so times to reinforce it.

 

"You ain't going anywhere Gregor."

Borkus all but sings it. He's beside himself with slimy, amphibian glee.

"You should have run off with your little tinny friends or had the good sense to die."

He grabs a chair, turns it around and straddles it, probably as he's seen tough guys do in the vids. Gregor sneers at him. Borkus giggles.

"Well you always were too dumb to do anything right. I'll teach you though, you bastard, you clone."

He leans forward; chair rising onto two legs. Gregor lashes out with his feet, kicks the legs away. Borkus crashes to the floor in a heap of jowls and magenta blood as he bites through his lower lip. He howls in wordless rage and jumps for the clone. Gregor waits, tenses, gets ready to break the conjoined chain. Borkus stops mid leap. His howl dies in a gurgle.

 

Someone yanks him backwards -- is holding the useless tub by the scruff of his neck. Gregor lets the chain go slack. Forces himself to sit back; no more playing now, brother Beerkin's here.

 

Beerkin is maybe a decade older than his hapless brother-in-law. He's also twice as big, almost as tall as Gregor and more heavily muscled. A male Sullustan in his prime. According to the local rumor mill he married Teecha, Borkus's older sister, about eight or nine cycles ago and used her family's money to build the basically the entirety of Pons Ora's entertainment district. Apparently, nobody's seen Teecha in at least four cycles but then nobody's really looking either. He's rumored to be keeping Borkus around only because without him Beerkin's access to the family trust fund was disputable at best.

 

If there's a mine in two hundred kilometers then Beerkin has an agreement with the owners to bus their exhausted, just paid help to his clubs and brothels. He started this particular venue as a higher end strip-joint to attract off-world trade. It and the affiliated "hotel," in addition to a number of even seedier places that make Gregor's skin crawl to think about, have made him the fiscal equal of the mining bosses. The main difference is that said bosses have probably never seen the surface.

 

Why Beerkin stays on a shitty backwater like Abafar if he's really richer than god Gregor never worked out. Maybe he's run afoul of some really nasty types elsewhere. Maybe he's actually barely competent and can only handle being the big boss on a tiny planet. Maybe he likes the weather. It doesn't matter right now because Beerkin is standing in front of him holding Borkus ten centimeters off the ground looking angrier than an earless gundark.

 

He drops Borkus who hits the splintered floor with a meaty thump. Which Gregor realizes at that moment is an actual sound, not just an expression. Borkus curls up but, intelligently, doesn't make any more noise. Beerkin turns away from him and looks down at Gregor. His voice is deeper than Borkus's and he's lost his Sullustan accent almost entirely. He sounds more like a cultured Inner-Rim patrician rather than a slum-lord pimp.

 

"Gregor isn't it? You work for my brother? You worked for me for a while too yes?"

There's no reason to lie at the moment. Gregor nods.

"What's this then?"

He tapped Gregor's chest plate. Gregor forces himself to be still though he'd love to rip Beerkin's hand off and feed it to him for touching his armor. Beerkin continues

"What's this, you want to play soldier? Didn't do you any good last time did it? No other survivors on that shuttle when we found you and you too mad to even remember your own name. And we took you in. And here you run at the first provocation. Why?"

Gregor glares; wishing he could psychically choke the life out of the thing in front of him like the Jedi he barely remembers are supposed to be able to.

"Oh dear, you're very frightening." Beerkin rolls his eyes theatrically to show his lack of concern. Borkus starts to titter but thinks better of it.

"I assume this means you choose not to answer my very relevant question. Perfectly alright but I think that will be the only one you may choose not to respond to. So, moving on..."

Beerkin reaches for something on his belt. In the dim light Gregor can't tell what it is precisely but he knows where this process is heading.  CC-5576-39 begins to breath slowly and focus on the dust motes in the air, it's temperature on his skin, the feel of his freshly cut hair against his ears. Beerkin continues.

"What exactly were you trying to accomplish with your little stunt at the space port?"

"It was hardly little." Gregor growls. He can't help but be proud of himself for what happened to all those droids and doesn't much care if Beerkin knows it.

"Beg pardon?"

"I said, it wasn't little you mother--"

Beerkin's hand snaps forward. The thing off is belt turns out to be a nerf prod, modified to have no safe voltage. It hits Gregor's chest plates with a clack. Though they're supposed to stand up to this sort of thing the voltage is too high. The plates conduct the electricity. Gregor cracks his head against the stage as his muscles spasm; fights to stay conscious. Beerkin pulls his hand back; the prod dangles from his wrist on a cord like a lady's purse.

"I don't generally allow my property to speak to me in that way."

Gregor spits at him, gets the prod again, passes out for a few seconds, comes to to see Beerkin sitting in Borkus's chair, right way 'round this time. Borkus is standing behind him, chin and jowls a mask of dried blood. Beerkin smiles unpleasantly and continues.

"I ask again, what did you wish to accomplish?"

Gregor stares straight ahead. CC-5576-39 reminds him to think only about the next minute, not to look at the prod or remember the pain. Borkus coughs and speaks up.

"There was a little froggy thing, said he was a colonel. Said he was Republic. He and those droids of his, they helped tie me up."

Beerkin shot him a disgusted look.

"Overpowered by droids..." he shook his head then turned back to Gregor.

"Is what my idiot brother says true? You were helping this colonel? Was he on that shuttle? Where was he going? What was he doing here? Does the Republic know about our agreement with the Separatist council?"

Gregor says nothing. Beerkin begins to trace the prod along his face, behind his ear, under his eye, down his cheek and jaw; gentle caresses, promises. Gregor refuses to follow the progress of the prod with his eyes; stares straight at Beerkin, but every nerve from his clavicle up tells him in detail where it's touched. Beerkin stops with it resting gently against the collar of his armor.

"Yes, that must be what were they doing here, investigating the Rhydonium shipments. They didn't come back for you after all this time did they?"

Gregor will not take that bait. Beerkin waits for him to respond. Gregor looks at him, trying to be blank the way CC-5576-39 wants him to be but he's pretty certain his hated for Beerkin is showing. The Sullustan snorts softly and resumes his exploration of Gregor's face and neck with the down-powered prod.

"No, obviously not as they left you here. How much do they know?"

Gregor smiles a little. Beerkin touches the prod to Gregor's throat and thumbs it back on. The electricity closes his windpipe, engages his gag reflex. He heaves into a locked throat. Beerkin drops the prod. Gregor slumps over retching. Beerkin nods to Borkus who hesitates but hauls Gregor upright when his brother glares.

"How much do they know?" Beerkin asks again.

"As much as they need to"

It's both true and basically useless. CC-5576-39 approves. There's no shame in telling the enemy what they already know to buy yourself time. Beerkin frowns but doesn't raise the prod.

"Is there a Republic presence in this sector? Where did they come from?"

"The Void."

Beerkin jabs and holds the prod to his throat for more than half a minute this time. Long enough for Gregor to start to drown in his own spit and vomit that gets trapped inside his throat. He falls all the way to the floor when the electricity slackens, slumped flat on his side,heaving; flashes of light going off across his eyes. He sits up on his own though, defiant. Beerkin grimaces. Borkus is getting impatient.

"He's not going to give us anything Ber. Let's call those Mandos you hired. The male and the female. Didn't they say they were interrogation experts?"

Beerkin crosses his arms over his thick chest and obviously starts to think it over. Gregor is still dazed from oxygen starvation. It takes him a minute to process what's just been said. Beerkin looks over at him and narrows his eyes assessingly. CC-5576-39 recovers fastest and sees his chance. It's a slim one but he's willing to take it.

Sergeant Tay'haai had taught him the Mandalorian language and some customs as a trainee. If they handed him over to Mandos he could invoke an honor debt, tell them to find Tay'haai before they killed him. They just might too if Tay'haai's reputation was actually as formidable as had been implied back on Kamino. He blinked at Beerkin, slowly, obviously. Beerkin caught it.

"What's that clone boy? You want to meet our Mandalorians?"

Gregor tries to make himself go pale, bares his teeth in a way he hopes look more scared than threatening: hopes Beerkin can read human fear signals.

He can. The barve smiles.

"Oh, I hear they love clones. See them as a reminder of their proud leader's legacy of whoring himself out to the Republic. They have a sort of patriotic fervor about their legacy these two."

"Fek you."

His voice is distorted from the prod and cracks at just the right moment. He thinks he sounds properly scared-but-hiding-it. Gregor feels a pinch of pride. But Beerkin's not quite done. He strokes his livid jowls with a think forefinger, striking a thoughtful pose.

"I would call them but they're rather far off. It'll take hours and hours for them to get here and...well, I'm not in a particularly patient mood. That and, with trade routes being so disrupted, one must think of ones bottom line. Perhaps...perhaps I might...incentivize you without having to resort to calling, and paying, the Mandalorians. Borkus!"

The other Sullustan jumps then gives a cowering sort of bow.

"Y-Yes Beerkin."

"Get the girl and ask and ask Siphar and Sint to join us."

Gregor really does feel the blood drain out of his head. He's completely forgotten about Thena; had assumed that Borkus just left her back at Beerkin's. Borkus probably would have but Beerkin's not a fool. He sees Gregor react and he starts to grin.

Borkus is back in the room a minute later, dragging Thena by her hair. The two Gans follow, snickering and elbowing each other. Thena's flushed with fear but still twisting and spitting at Borkus. She gets a good swing in at his bruised side and he yelps and lets go of her. She starts to run but there's something wrong with her left foot. She tries to put weight on it and stumbles with a pained gasp. The Gans catch her and shove her back to Borkus, who twists his thick arm across her throat and squeezes until she's choking.

 

Beerkin stands up and saunters to the stage, seating himself on the rim next to Gregor's outstretched hand.

  
"She's not very pretty is she? Built all wrong, no chest to speak of, ugly coloring. She made me no money as a dancer and now this trouble. And look at what she's made us do to her face. I couldn't even sell her to a Weequay."

  
The Gans have worked Thena over. She's got one black eye already and another's starting; lip split and dripping dark maroon blood down her dress, her face is a mess of bruises and small cuts, left cheek swollen to twice it's normal size. Gregor almost vomits again. Beerkin leans close.

"Still, Gans aren't all that particular about what it looks like...or how willing it is."

He motions to Borkus who throws the half swooning woman to the floor. She crouches on hands and knees coughing and sucking air back into her lungs. Borkus steps forward and kicks her right arm out from under her. She falls to the floor and he steps onto her back, foot resting heavily between her shoulder blades. Thena tries to struggle but Borkus presses down. Behind her the Gans are pulling at their trousers. Gregor throws himself forward, howling. Beerkin's ready with the prod, slamming it into his chest as hard as he can. Borkus, however, is not expecting an attack.

 

Somehow Thena twists, ripping at her skirt, pulling out a twenty-two and a half centimeter combat knife. She slashes at Borkus's ankles the blade sliding through the leather of his boot and the tendons beneath with equal ease. Borkus screams and falls. Beerkin looks up, dropping the prod for a split second. It's what Gregor needs.

 

He wrenches his arms forward as hard as he can. The chain snaps at the join, just as he'd guessed it would. The Gans are grabbing for their blasters. They had jammed them into their pants and the drooping ties and undone belts are slowing them down. Thena doesn't try to run on her injured foot this time, instead she slashes wildly at Borkus again, catching him in the gut; splitting it open in a spray of blood. Grey-yellow fat pushes out of the  wound. Borkus toppled over. Beerkin roars and lunges at her, forgetting Gregor. He shouldn't.

 

Gregor wraps the wrist chains around his neck and pulls as hard as he can, pulls until he feels the chains cut into Beerkin's throat; until blood makes his grip on the chains treacherous, until he feels something deep inside the Sullustans neck crack. Then he lets go and lets the body slump to the floor.

 

He looks up. One of the Gans is gone, the other is curled on the floor mewling and clutching his upper thigh. He'd apparently shot himself accidentally in his attempt to free his blaster. Borkus is panting grotesquely in a growing puddle of greenish blood as his heart pumps itself dry through the whole in his gut.

 

Thena's standing over him staring, skin piebald with bruises and her horrified flush. Gregor fumbles through Beerkin’s robes. The bastard must have a bloody key. It’s around his neck and so actually is bloody; which makes it slick. He almost drops it trying to maneuver it around his wrists but succeeds in unlocking the cuffs after an agonizingly long minute. Swearing under his breath he takes a step forward. Thena is just standing there as the Gan and Borkus writhe.

 

“Thena, don’t leave them like that.”

She looks at him like she’s never seen him. He can’t have her do this, not now.

“Thena kill him or give me my knife.”

She flinches, Borkus gurgles and coughs. He raises one glaucous stained hand toward her.

“Thena!”

Gregor doesn’t want to scare her more but she’s not moving fast enough. The Gan is staggering upright. CC-5576-39 jumps forward to make a grab for the knife even though he knows he's too far away. Gregor hisses painfully. He's not sure if it's fear or anger that lets him shout through his injured throat.

“Thena!”

She sobs, kneels down and slits Borkus’s throat. She lets go of the knife as he gives one more wet, strangled cough. Gregor is moving before the blade hits the floor. He scoops it up in one smooth motion, grabs Thena’s hand with the other and drags her toward the door. The Gan lurches toward him. Gregor buries the knife in his eye; wrenches it back out in a tacky spray of blood. Thena either giggles or sobs again and starts to collapse.

" _Haar’chak_ woman. Not now, please. _K’oyacyi, k’oyacyi_.”

He slides the knife into a magnetized sheath on his thigh despite the fact that it's filthy. He needs his hands free. Gregor kneels in front of Thena, grabs her face, and makes her look at him. He doesn't worry about the blood he's smearing all over her face either.

“We have to get out of here. Can you run?”

She blinks slowly, agonizingly slowly. Finally she shakes her head.

“My foot.”

He glances at her foot.She's not wearing shoes and the left one is an ugly blue-black; more swollen even than her face. He swears again.

“I’m going to carry you.”

He crouches and leans forward to pull her into a fireman’s hold but stops, remembering.

“Have you seen my bucket?”

She looks at him like he’s gone insane. He shakes his head and tries again.

“My helmet, did they bring it?”

She nods eagerly, grabbing onto something understandable.

“It’s in the kitchen, the Gans wanted to keep it.”

He nods back at her and tries to give her a reassuring smile. She looks worried but the awful flush is fading from her skin so he counts it a mixed success. He grabs her, slings her across his shoulders and stands without another word. He shoves through the door and there, incongruously perched next to the sink, is his helmet. He hasn’t got a free hand.

“Thena, grab my helmet please.”

He thinks she hasn’t heard him, has actually passed out or something. But then she moves, reaching down and hooking her fingers under it.

“Good girl.”

He kicks his way out of the back door and into the blazing Zenith sun.


	7. Chapter 7

One Month Ago:

 

The wages at Beerkin’s were certainly better than at Power Sliders but the easy access to alcohol tended to eat the extra cash up that much faster. Gregor knew, in a nebulous way, that he should not be drinking, that it slowed him down and dulled his edges. He didn’t much see why he needed edges and tended to ignore his internal warnings about drink. He tended to ignore his internal warnings about everything recently.

 

The last of the offworld traders was scheduled to leave in the morning. Beerkin had declared this evening as a special “farewell” for the crew of the freighter. He’d waived the cover charge for crewman and officer and called in every single female employee of his and Borkus’s for the night. The cramped back room that had been declared the “dressing room” was madness with at least thirty primping females vying for the limited space in front of the warped mirrors. Beerkin was standing in the back calling over each girl in turn and giving her an 'assessment' and costume. Gregor had taken one look inside in search of Thena when he’d first come in and promptly retreated to the back stairs. Though he hadn’t seen her for more than a day, the roiling sea of sequins; clouded with powder, warring perfumes, and hairspray was too much for him.

  
Payday wasn't for another week so he couldn't head to the bar with the other bouncers. That was fine with him, he didn't much care for their crude jokes and braggart lies about their physical prowess. Instead he snagged a bottle from an unguarded crate and sipped surreptitiously as he sat two risers up from the half-way point landing.

 

He wasn’t technically on duty for another hour and a half so he didn't have to be here hiding out on the filthy stairs like a lost puppy but he was still hoping to catch Them before their shift. He wanted to convince her to let him stay over at the hotel for the day. The power in his block was out again and it was impossible to sleep in the oven his apartment had become.

 

It was actually impossible for him to sleep even when the cooling unit wasn’t broken at his place. He’d always had strange dreams, full of fire and mud; red and black and burning white dreams that left him sweating and afraid. They came on every so often but he’d been able to keep ahead of them by working himself to dizzy exhaustion for Borkus, until recently. For almost a month now the dreams had become more frequent, more detailed and left him unable to fall back asleep after waking. And since he had begun to work for Beerkin even treble shifts hardly dimmed the images. The faces of the hapless customers he beat now floated through his unconscious mind adding their sobbing pleas to the din.

 

At first the alcohol had soothed his feverish subconscious but he seemed to be building up a tolerance. He took another slug from the bottle and bared his teeth at the thought. But it was the truth. He'd spent yesterday trying to drink himself unconscious in the heat but had succeeded only in making the horrible blood-mud images more vivid. His head still hurt from the cocktail of alcohol, heat, and hallucination but more drink was starting to take the edge off of it. That and the nebulous promise of escape from his sweat-dank bunker of a home.

 

He it seemed like he could only catch a few hours of rest only with Thena now. An afternoon or early morning wearing each other out with sex helped him. The sharp-hot scent of her skin and the bite of her sweat on his tongue was distracting enough to let him fall into a light sleep. His was still mildly plagued by an untraceable sense of guilt and confusion when he slept curled around her but that was easy enough to dull with liquor and since the bad conscience seemed to chase away the nightmares he thought it a fair trade.

 

* * *

 

 

An hour to opening time; the sound of female voices increased below him. The first wave of dancers were heading out to warm up on stage. It looked to Gregor like the early customers weren't expected to be human, the Rodian twins, Thena’s friend Mi Syung, and Dimchr the Voss were opening tonight.

 

He took another long swig of the alcohol, savoring the abrasive slide of it down his throat. The booze made him feel better about the night ahead which, if Beerkin had his way, was likely to be a rough one; drunk traders, girls and a last hurrah. He would almost certainly have to help Gorwind and his fellow Aqualish heavies with trouble makers. Gregor hated that part of the job,it seemed unfair to hit a creature who was so damned smashed it couldn’t properly fight back. It took even less skill than dishwashing but what was he supposed to do? Thena had all but asked him to look out for her and if he could hold on to the extra money he might even be able to move out of the wretched hole Borkus “rented” him.

 

He heard Thena’s hissed laugh and stood up. He tucked the mostly empty bottle behind him into a shadowy recess. She emerged from the “dressing room” seconds later and Gregor had to force himself not to goggle (or pull off his tunic and put it on her before someone saw her in the ridiculous getup she was wearing). It was his normal response to seeing her in 'costume' but the urge seemed especially powerful tonight

 

Beerkin made clear whenever the opportunity presented itself (and fairly often when it didn't) that he was concerned Thena wasn’t busty enough and/or was too thick through the hips. He thought she looked disproportionate. He’d devised all sorts of 'solutions' which generally involved tops that were at least a size too small and some form of shorts. Tonight, however, he had outdone himself. The top was tiny, as per usual, but trimmed in a long fall of synth-silk fringe that swung across Thena’s midsection. The bottoms appeared to be tied on and were about twice as revealing as her normal shorts, leaving swathes of the flesh at the top of her hips exposed. The whole thing was as black as her hair, throwing her skin into sharp relief and somehow managing seem even more ridiculously small as a result. His throat clicked dryly as he swallowed. He wished he hadn't finished off quite so much of the bottle as he dug through his brain for words.

 

“You look…you…err, nice?”

She curled her upper lip in distaste and pulled at the top.

“You should see Mi.”

“Uh, yeah, she, uh just came by.”

 

The Mirialan had been wearing a mesh brassiere and panties that barely covered her lush ‘assets’ as she was fond of calling them and hid exactly nothing. Gregor had wondered, while staring resolutely at his boots out of guilt, why she’d bothered to wear anything at all. Maybe being naked didn’t provide enough of a platform for her to jiggle on, which she’d done quite briskly, while waving,when she’d seen him lurking on the stairs. His neck and ears prickled as he thought about it and hoped it was too dark on the stairs for Thena to notice. He was lucky. She was too preoccupied with adjusting the minuscule bottom of her costume to look at him.

“Stupid, fat, lecherous—“

“Then?”

She started guiltily.

“I meant Beerkin.”

Gregor blinked and then caught up with her train of thought.

“Oh, I didn’t think…Are you…is he having you dance tonight?”

She grimaced again and crossed her arms over her chest.

“No, he only wants the top girls on stage, or the ones that customers have expressed an interest in, the slime bag.”

“You want to dance?”

She gave him an odd look.

“Well yeah. I mean I don't like it, not like Mi does. I’m not exactly built for it but being up there still beats serving drinks. I mean tips aside they can’t really…you know…grab quite as much.”

“Who grabbed you?”

He was surprised by how sharp his voice came out, surprised by the wash of red over his vision at the idea of some barve putting his hands on her. Thena took a step back and looked up at him with a wary question written behind her eyes. He took a deep breath and tried to let go of the unexpected anger.

“No one’s supposed to be touching any of you I mean.”

Her look turned slightly pitying and he felt his anger shift marginally in her direction.

“Only when they might be interfering with us making more money for Beerkin.”

“You should tell me if someone bothers you. I’ll take care of it.”

 

She smiled sadly, pity plain on her face, and leaned in to kiss his cheek. His sudden temper was having none of it. He turned his head at the last minute and met her mouth with his, kissing her hard. His hands wrapped around her waist possessively and he pulled her forward against his chest. She gasped and wobbled on her feet, catching herself against him. He took advantage of her surprise and swept his tongue into her mouth, teasing hers, withdrawing and biting lightly at the corner of her mouth the way he knew she liked. She definitely liked it now; sighing softly and sliding her hands in opposite directions up and down his back; one playing with the ragged hair along his neck the other coming to rest on the top of his backside.

 

A sound from the dressing room had them springing apart. Thena caught her shoe on a crack in the stair and flailed, nearly falling but for his quick grab for her upper arms. She wobbled to an unsteady stop pressed nearly as closely to him as she had been during their kiss. The position did nothing to curb his growing arousal.

 

“Kriffing things,” she hissed.

Gregor looked down at her feet, noticing the bizarre architecture of straps, spiked heels and platforms that were, apparently, meant to be taken as shoes.

“Huh, I thought you seemed taller.”

She shot him a filthy look.

“They’re wretched. I don’t know how I’m supposed to serve anything in them I can barely stand.”

He nodded gravely.

“They do seem pretty…unsafe. Can you take them off?”

“Not where Beerkin can see them, he thinks they make me look less bottom heavy.”

“I like you bottom. Your top too.”

She snorted but her eyes were playful.

“I noticed.”

“You know, there’s still some time before everything opens up. Beerkin’s got the upstairs cleaned up for gambling later. Nobody’s going to be up there for…awhile. You could…uh…take off your shoes?”

She flashed her brilliant, lopsided smile.

“Well look who's feeling adventurous. Why not?”

He smiled back and turned to lead the way upstairs, carefully giving her his arm for support so she didn't trip off her shoes.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Interlude # 2

In the five weeks since Thena first followed him home they hadn't fucked every day. Some days they hardly saw each other. He'd get on shift as she was leaving or she'd pick up an extra round at Borkus's while he was supposed to be at Beerkin's. Other days they managed it two, even three times; usually when they had a morning or afternoon off but occasionally up against walls or in neglected side rooms at work.

 

This was going to be one of the storage-cupboard type of encounters. These weren't generally his favorite way of making love. He preferred the sleepy mornings in bed where they could take an hour or so to build each other up or the nights where they knew they didn't have to get up at dawn; where there could be as much or as little haste as either one wanted. The fast, secret couplings were pleasurable but disquieting somehow, too rough, too rapid and intense. They left him feeling somehow as though he were seeing through more than one pair of eyes; aware of the inside of his own skin.

 

The disorientation could last for hours. It made him unsure of whether or not his body was his own. Made him react to familiar sights and sounds in strange ways and generally left him feeling unquiet on a level beyond normal perception.

 

He'd tried to explain it to Thena once, two or three weeks into their...whatever this was called. They'd been sprawled across her bed, which he rather preferred to his own given that it was both bigger and plusher than his. Not to mention permanently attached to the floor which helped keep down distracting squeaking noises. He'd just caught his breath but was still unwarily post-coital enough to want to explain why this was so much nicer than sneaking into the dry goods pantry at the diner. She'd giggled drunkenly at his attempts before trying to sooth him with kisses and claiming that double vision and wobble-legged-ness were just signs that they were doing it right in her book.

 

He'd tried to explain but his brain had been even muzzier than usual; clouded with hormones and something like guilt. She'd gotten his point all backwards and pouted a little when she thought that he must be finding their hours in bed less enjoyable than the quickies. Then she'd resolved to rectify the situation. He let her even though he thought it might have been a better idea to try to clarify his meaning to her again and be sure she understood this time. But she was naked and soft and he couldn't quite remember his point himself just at that moment. In the end he had indeed been seeing at least two Thena's riding him and feeling decidedly weak kneed but it was still different from the strange otherness he sometimes experienced.

The brief, intense sex also made his fragmented thoughts and the terrible dreams worse somehow. It was like something inside him woke up a little more after an intensely physical bout of sex. Sometimes during those encounters he felt as though something inside him, a stranger that lived in the back of his head, came forward as he and Thena fucked. It looked on with a cold, predator's interest through his eyes. It frightened him even as it's barely contained ferocity sizzled along his nerves, heightening every sensation.

 

It was disturbing to think that he seemed capable of divorcing his body and it's impulses so totally from his mind. That Thena could become an object to some part of him in those moments, a thing to satisfy his lust. That the fierce, animal side stirred by violence could also be moved by this. It alarmed him when his blood-dreams got confused with sex.

 

He had come back to himself several times since starting at Beerkin's with his hands bloody and his teeth bared in a feral smile as he dished out some 'punishment' to an unruly patron. He'd experienced the same sort disorientation after those episodes as he did in the wake of he and Thena's quickies. What if he lost control like that while he was with Thena? Could he hurt her, would he? Gregor didn't know and that was the worst thought of all.

 

So he'd started to avoid Thena's advances when they were in any venue where he knew they couldn't just duck out and find a proper bed. It seemed to be frustrating her but Gregor was adamant. He wouldn't risk it, wouldn't let that barrier between sex and violence thin.

 

But tonight he couldn't bring himself to be careful. The coming night at the club was going to be bad. He was going to have his red and black dreams, he knew it. It might make him a coward but the thought of facing those alone was too much. If he got Thena one, or more, good orgasms he reasoned, she'd probably be more amenable to him staying the night at the hotel even though Beerkin was certain to complain.

 

But Gregor had underestimated the stranger inside him; had not taken into account how close to the surface the recent stress had brought the Other. Something felt loose inside his head, like a door swinging on a busted hinge. The doubled perception hit him so fast he lost all sense of reality for a moment. When he came back down it was like he was standing outside himself. He watched the stranger kiss Thena's exposed shoulder, rub his face against hers to mark his territory. Gregor raged in incorporeal silence but the stranger heard. Somehow the Other looked at Gregor even as he kissed the female.

 

'My turn' the stranger whispered in Gregor's head. 'Mine now...also mine.' And then they were at the entrance to the private room upstairs. Gregor crashed back into his body as they crossed the threshold but the stranger was still in control.

 

He kicked the door shut the second they were both inside and propped a chair against the handle smoothly. Then he kissed Thena's properly and it wasn’t gentle or sweet. He took her jaw in his hands and held her head still so he could work her lips with his teeth and leisurely tongue her mouth open. Thena's eyes widened for a moment at the sudden change but he encouraged her not to think about it too much with little nips at the corner of her mouth and a slow grind of his pelvis against hers. She seemed to agree and slid her hands into his hair to hang on for the ride.

 

He smiled wolfishly as he let her up for air and began to walk her backward toward the card table. He was a little too quick, or maybe it was part of the plan, because Thena tripped. He had her up off her feet, across the floor and up against the felt covered table in seconds. She gasped in surprise and he kissed her again, all teeth and tongue; hands smoothly untying the lower portion of her costume.

 

They surfaced again long enough for her to help him pull the flimsy things off. Then he half encouraged, half lifted her onto the table and dropped to his knees between her legs. He took a moment to rub his cheeks along her dampening inner thighs, inhaling the salt-sweet smell of her deeply; rumbling his desire in the back of his throat.

 

She grabbed the edges of the table, white knuckled, as he nudged her legs farther apart with his face and dove in. Thena gave a high pitched sound of shocked pleasure and nearly went over backwards. They'd done this before. Gregor was too curious not to want to try to reciprocate oral sex after his first experience of it, but he was usually slow and careful about it, analytical almost. Not like this.

 

He used his mouth on her cunt the way he had on her lips, pulling the folds of flesh aside directly and pushing forward. He licked her clit until she writhed and, when it seemed like she was pulling away, like it was a little too much, he stopped and suckled. He started out with his hands on her inner thighs to keep her legs open at the angle he wanted but he didn't need to worry about that after a few seconds. Thena couldn't seem to get herself spread open enough. Her thighs were practically parallel to the table.

 

Now that his hands were essentially free he used those too, one up near her clit to keep it exposed to his mouth; with the other he pressed fingers inside her. Between the spit and her own fluids she was already wetter than she'd ever been this early on. He got two fingers up into her like they were nothing and pumped smooth and fast. He noticed that she seemed to be trying to stay sitting up, seemed to want to watch what he was doing. That just made it better for him somehow.

 

He glanced up at her face and Gregor felt a heady shot of testosterone-pleasure at her paleness, the huge round blackness of her eyes. The stranger all but preened at the sight. _Mine_ floated through his head again.

 

He smiled a little and hummed; teased her with the tip of another finger, rubbed his beard a little in her vulnerable skin. She opened her mouth but no sound came out. Her eyes rolled up in her head until he could see the bluish membranes that kept them in the sockets.

 

Her internal muscles were beginning to flutter around his fingers. He tore his eyes away from her face and went back to work. He bit down just hard enough to pinch her clit. She collapsed onto the table. He laved it with his tongue and used his teeth again. He had to move his hand up to her lower belly and press down to keep her sort of still then. She was thrashing around so much the table was shaking.

 

He felt her pulse race against his lips. He sucked on the nub of flesh and gave her all three fingers. She tensed down on them so hard it was difficult for him to move them. But he had a clear objective in sight and managed a beckoning curl of his digits inside her. She sat up with an explosive gasp. He did it again and she fell back down.

 

Her legs closed around his head; soft, soft thighs pressing into his cheeks. He kept biting and licking and sucking her; just moving his fingers in and out. Her thighs started to shake and then the rest of her. She bucked her hips straight up off the table but he stayed with her as she convulsed. Her mouth was open again but he couldn't hear if she made noise over the pounding of his own pulse in his ears. He played her until her hips fell back down and she started trying to prop herself dizzily onto an elbow to look at him again.

 

She looked like she wanted to say something. Her lips started to round into the 'G' of his name but the he didn't want to hear that. Instead he pulled her close and kissed her, not caring how he tasted. She shivered and kissed him back. He forgot for a moment where he stashed the pair of condoms from the box he bought and hid in his apartment earlier in the week. They turned up in his chest pocket. Thena grabbed one and brushed against his nipple in the process. He hissed. The smile she flashed him was more than a little woozy. The alpha male currently in possession of his body purred.

 

He plucked the condom out of her hands and opened it while she undid his belt and fly. He didn't bother to get his boots off, just wiggled his hips until he was free enough. He latched onto Thena's neck to distract her from her groping of him while he slid the condom onto his cock.

 

She twisted a little, trying to stop him leaving an obvious mark so he moved up and chewed on the skin behind her ear, nose in the short, soft hair there that was sweaty and delicious with pheromones. She wriggled and pressed forward towards him. He took the hint, slid a hand down her back, along the lovely, generous curve of her ass, and pulled to where he could work himself into her.

 

She let out a jerky, high pitched sound suddenly and arched her back as he pressed home. He guessed that he was probably doing this a little fast and tried to slow down. But she wrapped her legs around his hips and locked her ankles under his ass, refusing to let him, and he was gone. He buried his face in her hair and thrust and thrust. She was panting and holding onto his arms hard enough it hurt. It was fantastic.

 

He pushed her too far back on the table and almost came out but the combination of her legs and his hands hauled her back to slam them together with bruising force. She was murmuring on each ragged out breath; his name, like a mantra. He found that he liked that now. He couldn't find word of his own; could only growl into her hair. Her hands clutched his shoulders even harder somehow and it was like he could feel every bone in her fingers digging into the muscles as she met his rhythm.

 

She was shivering again but he was going to beat her to the top. It was a ridiculously easy glide into her and almost all the way back out with just enough friction for it to be good, to be perfect. She was sweating. Droplets collected in the downy side-hair in front of her ear and ran along her neck. He licked it off her. Sweat pooled in the hollow of her throat. He lapped it out. It was too damn sweet, his legs were starting to shake. Then she unstuck words other than his name.

 

“Close, please.”

 

He knew what to do, orders received and understood. He slid a hand between them and pulled with thumb and forefinger, twisted a little and she arched like a bow and clamped down around him so tight he saw stars. And then there was only the animal instinct that told him to push and withdraw as hard as he could until there was nothing but blackness behind his eyelids.

 

* * *

 

They barely made it to the tiny staff fresher without being caught. They were both so unsteady on their legs that Thena had to take off her shoes as she couldn't walk and he couldn't catch her. The rapid faucet bath almost set them off again; her half sitting in the sink and not seeming to care even a little bit about how awkward it was while pulled her top down and licked at her nipples.

 

Beerkin's strident shout of "ten minutes" in the hall outside broke them apart. They finished quickly. He wiped at his beard, trying to get the scent of her out of it so the Aqualish and Weequays don't start acting weird around him again. She did the same between her legs. He wanted to help her dry off but decided that would only get them in more trouble. Instead settled for kneeling on the tile to help her retie the bows on her bottoms. He couldn't stop himself pressing his lips against each hip bone as he did though. He also let himself stand up slowly, dragging is face along her spine all the way up the column of her neck; secretly enjoying the fact that his scent was still prominent on her despite her efforts to clean it away. She giggled and kissed him quickly before slipping out into the throng of girls on the way to the main floor.

 

He waited in the fresher for the sound in the hall to die down. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror; unkempt hair and beard and didn't recognize himself. He leaned forward until he could only see his own eyes in the glass. He fought the vertigo of staring into the stranger's eyes. They were harsh edged as always, all cunning and violence. He stared for a moment longer, trying to finds some familiar landmark in those golden brown depths and saw...satiety and a greedy, smug sort of fire burning way back . He felt the same liquid contentment and possessive satisfaction down deep in his spine and stepped back from the mirror. The eyes were still not quite his own but at least there was some common ground. He smoothed his hair back as best he could and stepped out into the smoky din of the club


	9. Chapter 9

One Month Ago:

 

By the time the night was starting to really wind up, club floor full of people, easily three times as many as the forty or so freighter jockeys that Beerkin was nominally seeing off. The seven "officers" Gregor had not seen for most of the night. They had been swept upstairs by a disconcertingly friendly Beerkin and his Twi'lek and Theelin girls.Only the best of the best for the suckers most likely to drop large sums or be enticed into smuggling whatever contraband Beerkin and Borkus inevitably had.

 

If the officers were anything like the crew the Sullustans were going to be very pleased. The amount of money that had changed hands, or rather been handed over to Beerkin's dancers, bartenders and waitresses by the increasingly drunk, raucous crowd, was slightly mind boggling. Especially given the usual paucity of hard currency on Abafar. Gregor had long since stopped trying to keep track of the total tips the girls handed over to him and the other "security" males for safekeeping. It must have been nearly their annual net worth. Spacer and Pons Ora bound patrons alike were spending like it was their last night alive. Gregor wondered if Beerkin had spiked the drinks with some inhibition lowering drug. Maybe it was just the prospect of having to return to normal lives, be they as a space trader trying to avoid tariffs, pirates and war with mixed success or the quiet, dust caked desperation of the existence on Abafar, that was making everyone act crazily.

  
Meez or maybe it was Ceerak, Gregor had trouble telling the Aqualish thugs that made up most of the security detail apart, sidled up to him. The Aqualish was obviously the worse for wear thanks to something (drink, spice, both?) They weren't supposed to be high on the job.

 

Gregor always made a careful point of not drinking too much before going on shift or working off most of the alcohol in the hours leading up to work. He usually went for a run but he was thinking that spending quality time with Thena on the felt of the card table upstairs was far preferable to a solitary jog (even if he still couldn't shake the strange feeling of someone else occasionally looking out through his eyes that the sex had brought on.)

 

Gorwind, however, never really enforced the substance abuse/use rules (or basically any of the other ones) with his boys. So here was Ceerak, or Meez, swaying on his feet as he made those weird clicks that Aqualish used to express amusement.

 

"Hey, Gregor?"

Gregor only nodded, not wanting to admit that he had no idea who he was talking to. It was good enough for Meez/Ceerak. He continued in a high pitched whisper.

"Have you been around to the side stage?"

"Not for awhile, why?"

He was pretty certain he knew what Ceerak/Meez was hinting at but he didn't particularly feel like making it too easy for the other bouncer. He'd once called Thena weird looking within Gregor's earshot. Gregor had yet to forgive him (and who the hell was an Aqualish to call somebody weird looking anyway?) Meez/Ceerak was too far gone to realize Gregor was being obstinate. He giggled and pressed on.

 

"One of the freighter...er...freighter-ers has got Q'nicho on her back."

He giggled harder, drooling over his tusks a bit. Gregor moved his feet discreetly out of drip-range.

"Mmhm."

"Oh yeah. It's hot stuff, hot stuff. But, uh, the boss, you know he doesn't want any...of that going on here. So maybe you could...I mean...break it up?"

Gregor refused to take the bait.

"Break it up? You want me to throw him out?"

Ceerak/Meez looked alarmed, or like he was going to vomit. Gregor wasn't sure. He took another step away regardless as the Aqualish sputtered.

"What? No. I mean yes. I mean they need to go back to the boss's other place, the hotel."

 

He wanted Gregor to take the rutting freighter crew member and the notoriously easy Duros girl and escort them two blocks back from the club to Beerkin's wife's former house. Everyone referred to it as 'the hotel' at Beerkin's insistence though he had yet to think up a proper name for it. All of the girls who worked for Beerkin were contractually obligated to live there regardless of what they did but the place mainly operated as a brothel.

 

Most employees lived on the top two floors in small but marginally comfortable rooms. They weren't required to sell themselves, Beerkin merely took the rent out of their wages and left the possibility of 'earning it back' open. The ground, first and second floors had much larger, better decorated areas where the girls who felt so inclined were supposed to take customers who wanted to do more than look. Some of the better 'earners,' like Mi Syung, actually got to live on the lower floors too, in designated rooms.

 

Additionally, Beerkin had installed cameras in all of the unassigned rooms so that he could make sure the girls were charging the customers the appropriate amount, and so he could watch or sell the footage later. It all struck Gregor as pretty loathsome and he tried not to ‘escort' girls to the hotel with a guest unless they specifically asked him to.  
Q'nicho was either actually interested in this guy or she didn't want to kite the percentage of her fee to Beerkin and/or add this encounter to his personal vid collection. Good for her, thought Gregor. Meez/Ceerak probably had some swindle in progress elsewhere and thus didn't want to leave the premises to be sure Q'incho did what she was supposed to be doing (or the location of the hotel had fallen through some spice blasted hole in the Aqualish's brain).

 

Whatever the reason he was trying to get Gregor to take the girl and her 'patron' out. Gregor decided he wasn't having it. He wanted to make sure Thena didn't get manhandled too much and he found he rather liked pissing the Aqualishes off for his own perverse reasons. (The stranger in his head agreed, pointing out that you really couldn't feel bad about punching one of them either).

 

Ceerak/Meez grunted unhappily and drew breath to try whining some more. He never managed it because the noisy atmosphere was suddenly silenced by a shrill scream. Gregor took stock of the room without realizing he was doing it. Dense crowd around the front and kitchen doors, thinner towards the back but still too many people, too many potential obstacles. There was a boarded up set of windows behind the far right hand stages that led into a blind alley where another building had been put up too close to this one. The door separating that building from the alley was thin and flimsy though, he'd seen and taken note of it when he'd first had a tour after taking the job.

 

He could get out that way, could get Thena out with him. He already knew where Thena was. He'd locked her location into his brain before the screaming had stopped. She and Mi Syung were standing in a corner not more than two meters from the right hand stage. They'd been talking, taking a break.

 

Gregor didn't wait to see what Meez/Ceerak was going to do. He slid through the crowd like a knife-fish. Thena startled when he touched her shoulder but immediately grabbed his hand when she realized it was him. Her other hand was being wrung blue in Mi's death grip.

 

Gregor was about to start pushing them discretely towards the old windows when another scream ripped through the club; several of the non-professional women gave little screams of their own in response. Gregor noted, in the same half conscious way he had assessed the escape routes, that every single one of Beerkin's girls was standing frozen, silent and scared. He felt his breathing deepen and a cold wave wash through him taking any tired muzziness of the long night with it. There were sounds from the back of the house near where the stairs led to the gaming rooms; heavy footsteps, something being dragged.

 

Prebey, one of the Rodian girls who had danced at opening came sailing down the stairs, pushed by someone above. She didn't make a sound, didn't try to stop her fall. She landed in a heap on the floor half a meter from the last step; landed face down and didn't get up. Her eyes were open. There was green blood leaking from her mouth and somewhere on her body, slow and thick. She'd been dead for several minutes at least.

 

The scream came a third time. Nobody moved. Beerkin appeared at the top of the stairs, Gorwind was right behind him dragging Haalvey, Prebey's sister. Haalvey was screaming. She was dirty and her feet were bare and bleeding but other than that she didn't look too badly hurt. Mi made a strangled noise that was almost too soft to hear and pressed against Thena who had bitten her lip so hard it was leaking blood.

 

"This is how you show your thanks for my hospitality?" Beerkin screamed at someone on the balcony.

"You try to steal my girls? I bought them, paid their mother myself. And you think you can just have them?"

 

One of the freighter's officers was standing apart from the rest; a Rodian, staring at Preybey's body. A tall human looking woman with white, close cropped hair steped out of the huddle of other officers.

 

"What are you accusing my crew of Mr. Beerkin?"

Beerkin rounded on her glaring dangerously though she was taller than him.

"Conspiracy, deceit."

"You have proof of this?"

Beerkin nodded to Gorwind. He reached for Haalvey's dress and pulled it aside to get to an inner pocket. Haalvey tried to grab for the sheets of flimsy he pulled out but she was too slow. Beerkin took the sheets from his head of security and made a show of shaking them out so he could read them. Haalvey clutched at her ruined dress sobbing.

 

"Haalvey my dearest. I cannot stand the thought of you in the clutches of that monster for another moment. I yearn for you...et cetera and so forth...ah, here it is. We leave in the morning. Be ready to go at ten past three. I will have M1K4 meet you at the corner of Salt street and Hydroscin."

 

Beerkin stopped and looked expectantly at Gorwind. Gregor realized that they must have discussed how to present their evidence before hand. It made him vaguely nauseous. Gorwind blinked slowly, then shook himself.

"Right, er, yes. I saw that one," he motioned to Haalvey "sneaking out on her own and I was, er, concerned for her safety. I followed her to Hydroscin street and saw her and her sister with an astromech. When I, er, stepped in to see what the matter might be they ran."

Beerkin was nodding. He continued. Gorwind looked relieved.

"Very unfortunate. We had to question them of course and she," he motioned to Prebey too "told us everything."

That explained the contusions visible on poor Prebey's face. The freighter captain was glaring at the Rodian male, who had gone an unhealthy grey-green.

"Is there something you would like to tell me Toosa?"

Toosa stammered but eventually shook his head. The captain bared her teeth and heaved an angry breath before turning to Beerkin.

"What do you want?"

Beerkin batted his eyes. Thena shivered and pressed her body against Gregor's harder. He could feel her trying to stop shaking and failing. Mi was crying in perfect silence, her green skin almost as grey as Toosa's.

"Want Madame? I want not to be taken advantage of by traders who think me a bumpkin. Perhaps one or two slaves is nothing where you come from but my stock is of great value to me."

The captain visibly ground her teeth.

"My apologies master Beerkin. Perhaps this...discussion might be better conducted in private."

Beerkin almost grinned but controlled himself.

"Of course, this way please."

He motioned her back into the upstairs rooms. As soon as the door closed the crowd began to buzz with conversation. Gorwind let go of Haalvey's arm, the girl dashed down the stairs and threw herself onto her sister's corpse, sobbing. Ceerak and Meez appeared out of the crowd and grabbed her. Gorwind shouted.

"All right you lot, show's over. Club's closed. Get out."

There were murmured protests from some. Gorwind snarled and drew a blaster.

"I said clear off unless you want some too."

 

The patrons rushed to the exits with less dignity than a swarm of whomp rats off a sinking sand-barge. In a few seconds the only people in the club were the officers and Beerkin's staff. Gorwind rounded on them.

"Let this be a lesson to you. Don't steal from the boss."

He raised the blaster and shot Haalvey cleanly through the head.

"Damaged goods. Remember that girls, you run you'd best not stop lest I find you," he spat by way of explanation. Flipping on his heel he stalked down the stairs and out the back door. Meez and Ceerak followed him carrying the bodies.


	10. Chapter 10

Now:

 

They're lucky. No one is outside in the terrifying fever-blaze of midday. No one is even lurking at their windows hoping for a breeze. The streets are empty and silent except for the pounding of Gregor's feet and his ragged breathing.

  
It's the hot season on this hemisphere. Abafar has titled its underbelly towards it's blue-white sun, letting it bake the salty ground to a ceramic hardness. To be outside for more than a handful of minutes at Zenith, even just standing or walking slowly, is to invite heat stroke. Gregor is running in 20 kilos of katarn armor with an additional fifty to sixty of semi-conscious female slung across his shoulders. The armor systems are trying to kick in and help regulate his body temperature but it's been months since anyone's run even the most basic of maintenance checks on it; it's sluggish and glitchy. He'll be fine for a moment, cool except for the burning air he's sucking into his lungs. The next second he'll feel like he's encased in a metal box that's been left out in the sun; which he is in a sense. The shifts in temperature are almost worse than the heat and the pain of his own wounds.

 

Gregor knows they're not going to make it much farther. If they don't get under cover soon he's going to collapse and there's no way Thena can drag him out of trouble this time. He's mildly surprised she managed to earlier, she must have had help. He's surprised she even bothered to round someone up to go look for him in fact but that's not an immediate concern. He needs to find someplace with a working AC unit and fast.

 

He takes a corner too quickly and staggers as Thena flinches away from a wall, upsetting his balance. He stumbles, goes down on one knee and suddenly he can't get up. He can't breathe. He's dizzy. His head is pounding. Someone is shouting at him. Something hits him on the side of the head, gently but hard enough to make colors swirl across his vision in his current state.

"Gregor. Gregor! Put me down. Put me down before you kill yourself you idiot."

He can't remember why he's hold the squirming, shrieking thing on his back so he does as he's told. It hits the ground with a grunt and staggers semi-upright. He sees all-black eyes sunk in bruised sockets, white skin, blacker hair.

  
Thena. He sees Thena. She's tugging on his arm and speaking.

"Get up, try a little bit. Just a bit more. I can't carry you. Gregor, please."

The please gets him, it always gets him when she says please. He lurches to his feet; putting too much weight on Thena, who wobbles and hisses in pain. She doesn't say anything though, doesn't let him pull away. She half-drags him toward a door way and lets him go. He sags down the wall as she begins to claw at the control panel.

"Come on, come on, stupid thing. Stupid. Kriffing. Thing."

It's useless, she can't get the face plate off. She slaps the wall in a rage. Something occurs to Gregor. It bubbles up slowly in his overheated brain. He reaches for one of the pair of pouches on his back. There's only one there now but it's the one he wants. He rummages for a moment, fingers clumsy and hot, but it's like touching his own face in the dark. He finds what he wants with little difficulty. Thena has wandered a few meters away and appears to be looking for something on the ground. He tries to get her attention. It takes three attempts before his voice comes out of his parched throat loudly enough for her to hear. She turns and looks at him; a large ochre colored rock clutched in her hand.

  
"Use this," he croaks.

She walks back to him, doesn't drop the rock but does reach for the object he's holding out to her. It's a stylus. She looks down at it, then back to him, eyebrows furrowed. He motions toward the door panel.

"Stick it in the override slot. One on the left. Push the blue button on the top."

 

Even as he says it he can't think of how he knows that. It's the same way he knows the make and model of the door, Jarrsek-009AB, override on left hand side. It's the same way he can remember exactly how many calories he needs to consume to maintain his body at optimal functionality or how far and fast he can run before the lactic acid makes his muscles spasm too uncontrollably. The distance is subdivided by altitude. For a moment Gregor wonders who or what in _haran_ he is to know all of this.

 

The entire train of thought is over in less than a second. He crashes back to the here and now so abruptly he nearly topples over. He remembers who he is, what he is, and even in the heat and the pain there's a little jolt of pleasure. Then Thena makes a choked, distressed sound. He feels the tangle of confused, unhappy protectiveness rise at the noise. His commando side tries to register his disapproval again but he's overheated too and only manages a half-hearted, mental growl. Gregor motions at the door, unable to form words.

 

Thena still looks skeptical but does as he asks, inserts the stylus and presses the tiny blue tab on it. The panel clicks, the door whirs open with a rush of dusty, cooler air that's miraculous. Thena lets out a new noise that's one part laugh and one part sob. She turns to him and grabs his hand, pulling him forward into the welcoming dark. They make it less than a meter inside before he collapses. Thena lets him slide flat to the ground, stumbles back outside for a moment to retrieve the stylus and then closes the door. He hears the dull thunk of the rock hitting the stoop and then everything's black.

 

* * *

 

 

However long he's out it's not long enough. He comes to with a grunt and a start and his head's still trying to pound itself apart and he still feels like he's about to vomit. Something is pulling on his arms. It's rocking his head back and forth sickeningly. He turns his head and dry heaves. He tries to pull away from whatever it is and is suddenly knocked flat again by Thena. She falls across his chest, swearing. He blinks down at her as she brushes her tangled hair violently out of her eyes.

"You could help me you know, rather than thrashing. I've only done this once before."

He's about to ask her what this is when he notices that a third of the armor on his right side is missing. He tenses his inner commando roaring to life in a rage but then he sees the messy stack of plates nearby. The commando voice, CC-5576-39’s voice as he is beginning to think of it, subsides.

 

Gregor sits up slowly. He's about to protest that he needs his armor when he notices how much cooler his exposed body glove is. His armor is suffocatingly hot; the internal mechanisms of seem to have given up entirely. He reaches for the chest plate and undoes the catches. It pops off with a groan of abused plastoid. His body temperature feels like it drops five degrees. By the time he and Thena finish he's shivering. Her arm comes up as though to wrap around his shoulders but stops. She's thought better of it apparently and instead squats about half a meter from him, dark eyes creased with worry as they flick between his face and the rest of room. Looking at her makes him too unbalanced he thinks so he takes a moment to peruse to room himself instead.

 

They've fallen, literally in his case, into a semi-derelict housing unit. The mining firms keep these places for the nominal use of workers. The mines around Pons Ora though have been mainly staffed by droids for years so these units are less than half occupied. There's a grey table with matching gray shelves in a tiny kitchen. A door hanging on broken hinges in back leads to another room, probably a sleeping area. It's one of the bigger units, meant for a miner and family but it's still only about twice as large as Gregor's old apartment. The prefab everything coupled with the empty, decaying air of the place makes it three times as depressing.

 

Thena reaches some sort of decision as he's getting his bearings. He sees her nod to herself, set her jaw and move towards him suddenly. She tries to push him toward a back room, muttering something about him sleeping off the rest of the heat. He resists.

 

He has to straighten up his armor if Sergeant Tay'haai caught him leaving it in such a state. It occurs to him suddenly that it's unlikely that Sergeant Tay'haai or Tev or Jax or Martel are ever going to comment on his armor again. He cannot remember if any one of them is dead or alive with any certainty. He thinks Sergeant Tay’haai probably is because his subconscious tells him that death is probably scared of the old man.That’s just a guess though, a rickety scaffold on which to build a hope that there's another life somewhere for him. He realizes that most of his expectations are hanging off of similarly untrustworthy frameworks.

 

He will not follow that thought now. If he pauses, if he waits or tries to make sense of the past or the future at all he’ll stop. If he stops he’s dead. Either Gorwind and company will find him or the droids will or he’ll just give up in the face of hopeless odds and walk out into the Void.

 

But still, he pauses him in the middle of stacking his leg plates, hands frozen, reaching for the shin guard. He looks up from his work, trying to re-place himself in this moment of time. He sees Thena watching him. She’s given up trying to help him and is leaning against the tiny kitchen sink, arms crossed over her chest; waiting for him to fall flat on his face probably.  
He's stabbed by a sense of betrayed confusion surfacing from the memory of his time with her. Even if his far past is still hazy he can see what has passed between himself and Thena clearly. It produces a mild anger; not the killing rage he felt for Beerkin, a stinging hint of temper.

 

He harnesses the anger, uses it. It grits his teeth, pushes the memories of his dead brothers and Sergeant aside, makes him refuse to be weak and soft like Thena thinks he is. He finishes stacking his armor and manages to walk, steadily, to one of the chairs at the rough kitchen table and sits. That he probably won't be able to stand up again for a while now that he's seated isn't an issue he's ready to deal with.

 

Thena glares. He glares back, or tries to. It's hard to stare daggers at a woman who's face is blue and black like that. She's washed some of the blood off but there's still a crust around her split lip and cheek where the skin is swollen and doubtless too tender for her to touch. He can't stand the silence after a minute or two.  
"Are you okay?"

 

He wanted to come across as authoritative, Captain CC-5576-39 asking for a status report. He sounds a lot more like Gregor the dishwasher though, worried and gentle. Thena is holding her face very still so it's hard to understand her words as she answers; barely moving her lips.

 

"I guess. Are you?"

 

She frowns, furrows her brow and then sucks in a breath when the movement pulls on her bruises. She doesn't wait for him to respond though. Instead she pulls a tall, ceramic mug with an InterStella Mining Industries logo on it from a shelf behind her and fills it with water from the tap. She hobbles over to the table and puts it down in front of him. He wants to tell her to sit down before she falls down but the water distracts him. He's got the cup to his lips and drained before he knows his hand moved.

"Careful, you'll be sick if you drink it like that." Thena snaps.

But she takes the mug and refills it, gives it back to him. He tries not to gulp this one. The water tastes metallic and smells slightly like fuel oil but it's what his body wants. Thena is back to leaning against the sink by the time he finishes his second cup. The grit and lingering taste of bile and scorch is generally out of his throat. His tongue is still thick but his head is clearing. He notices that Thena is gripping the edge of the sink so tightly her knuckles have gone bloodless. Her lips are thin with pain and her eyes are too wide in their bruised sockets.

 

"Would you please sit down?" He snaps. "You're going to make your foot worse if you don't."

 

She says nothing, face impassive. But she does ease into a chair, after topping off his mug a third time. He guesses that she can't be that angry with him if she's taking such care to be sure he doesn't die of dehydration. It makes his own revenant-anger with her soften a little. He feels a desire to reach out for her, confirm that she's okay with his hands. Her next statement stops him, chilling his want to bridge their increasing gap into absolute zero territory.

"So you really are a clone."

 

It's not a question and it's not what Gregor wants to talk about but Thena says it before he can pull his brain fully together. Some part of him feels cracked, fragile when he hears her finally say it. CC-5576-39 steps in front of that part and begins listing the need for transport and weapons. Gregor feels a detached calm settle over him as CC-5576-39 reasserts the immediate. Don't think about the past, don't think about the future. Now is all there is. The pain is still there but it’s distant now, more like the burn in his throat and the contusions on his back. He shrugs.

 

"I told you that before. What convinced you?"

She glances down at her hands.

"Borkus."

That statement stings right through the numbing wall CC-5576-39 is trying to throw up. He hears the pain in his voice when he remembers how to speak again.

"So you trust Borkus now and not me? Trusted I mean."

She flinches but responds.

"He kept calling you that, while you were stunned, he kept babbling about how he wasn't going to let you go and bring the Republic down on his head, about how he'd worked too hard to scuttle the shuttle he found you in and retrain you. He seemed...he was so out of it that I guess I finally believed him. I mean he was too...I don't think he could make anything that coherent up the way he was."

Gregor has nothing to say to that so he doesn't try. CC-5576-39 changes the subject to something safer, more useful.  
"Did they get my guns?"

She looks down at her hands again and speaks so quietly he has to lean forward to hear.

"I don't think so. I...hid them."

He leans forward a little more, trying to catch her eyes, trying to force her to tell him everything.

"When, where? Can you get them."

 

He feels the urge to touch her growing again, not grab her or shake her or anything, just put his hands on her so she can't put too much distance between them. It's the primary method he's used up to now to communicate whatever he finds too complex to say to her he realizes. If Thena's upset or sad or off in any way; if he's upset or confused or emotionally unbalanced, Gregor wants to put his hands on her.CC-5576-39 tells him it's because physical proximity can help breed familiarity and trust, that it's the most basic way humanoids communicate trust; as well as being an intimidating reminder of what might happen if you don't want to be trusting and cooperative. The later half of that thought pulls his eyes down to her exposed wrists and the hand-shaped bruises there. He feels dizzy again and it's not from the heat.He doesn't touch her. She glances up, sees his expression and looks down again.

 

"I don't know."

CC-5576-39 gets angry at the non-answer. She's being evasive. He almost shouts but his hands stay clenched at his sides.

"You don't know what?"

 

Thena looks at him for the first time in the conversation. Gregor sees the change in her body language. She's still withdrawn, but he can understand why after Beerkin and the Gans. There's no more denial though. She's not trying to avoid his questions like back at the hotel. She's upset and scared, not of him Gregor hopes, but she's working out the reality on the ground. Thena's a sensible girl, naive maybe but not stupid. She knows who's going to help her and who isn't he reassures himself.Even as she flinches a little at the tone of his voice she answers clearly.

 

"I...when Mi and I brought you back I hid your guns in that big vase on the landing, the one nobody can move even though  
it's in the way. I...I didn't tell Borkus where they were. I mean he didn't ask but I didn't tell him. I think they're still there but..."

"You don't know."

 

She shakes her head. He wants to be angry with her for not just handing him his weapons. He could have fought his way out then says the commando, none of this would have happened. But he sees the way Thena's face is drawn, the way her eyes pull at the corners. If she were fully human she'd probably be crying. He sees this and he knows that she must be thinking the same thing; that she regrets doubting him. He forgives her, CC-5576-39, surprisingly, forgives her too; as long as she gets him his weapons back that is.

 

He starts to stand up. The room spins. He presses his fist into the table and stays on his feet, barely. Thena looks up, alarmed.

"What are you doing?"

"Going to get my weapons back."

She's suddenly on her feet too, also swaying; but less than he is Gregor thinks sourly.

"Hells you are."

 

He turns on her, teeth bared a little but she's standing her ground. It's impressive, even though she's still wobbling and her face is starting to flush with pain and fear again. She holds up her hands, placating. He gets another look at the bruise on her wrist from a different angle. He can count the tips of each of his fingers imprinted on her skin. Even with her new collection of marks it still looks like the ugliest thing on her body to him. The shame calms him. He stays silent and listens as she speaks.

 

"You can't go back there now. You're about ten minutes away from heat stroke anyway and half this city is looking for you. The other half too when that Gan straightens up enough to tell somebody what happened at Beerkin's."

Her hands are still up in front of her, palms towards him. She lowers them slowly; a motion meant to sooth. She chews her lips for a moment; looks into his face as though searching for something. He can't tell if she finds what she wants or not but she straightens her shoulders. Breathes in deeply, back out, in again.

"I'll go and get them."

"They'll be looking for you too, " he snaps petulantly.

She shrugs.

"I'm a bit less conspicuous."

It's his turn to look at her face; at the motley bruises. She narrows her eyes, acknowledging his stare.

"A roughed up whore isn't exactly novel around here."

"You're not a whore."

He's mildly perplexed that that statement comes out in CC-5576-39's voice.

"Everything but."

He blinks at the deadness of her tone as she says that. It's important to him, somehow, that she's not a whore, that she not call herself that but he can see it's not the fight they need to have now. He comes at her from a different angle instead.

"So how are you going to do that, go back and get me the guns? Maybe the city won't be looking for you yet but Beerkin's people sure as shab will be."

She pauses, thinking; reaches up to stroke her lip in thought, hits the cut and gasps a little. Gregor wants to comfort her.CC-5576-39 barely remembers to stop him.

"I'll talk to Mi. She'll help."

"Mi?"

"You know Mi Syung."

"Why would she help?"

 

"Because she's my friend. She already helped me dig you out of that shuttle platform."

 

He feels a new stir of something like guilt at the reminder that he'd probably be dead now if Thena, and apparently Mi Syung, hadn't decided to come rescue him despite everything that had happened. He stamps it down.There's too many emotional pits to fall into here. He reminds himself again of the need for his guns and how he needs to go; try to get back to something simpler, even if he dies in the attempt. He focuses on exactly what Thena has just said to calm himself, on  
what seem to him to be the obvious holes in her story.

 

"Why did she do that, Mi? Why would she want to save me?"

"I don't know Gregor. I came back to the hotel after I got to the diner and found Borkus."

"You went to the diner?"

"Yeah. Anyway, I found Borkus and untied him --"

"Why did you do that?"

She looks at him incredulously.

"I had no idea why he was tied up. I thought there had been another robbery or something. You didn't exactly leave a note explaining what happened. How was I supposed to know that he'd...what was going on."

"Would you have believed me if I'd left a note? You hadn't even seen me in two weeks."

Her face goes from incredulous to baleful in half a heartbeat.

"What does that have to do with any of this?"

She's right,CC-5576-39 has to give her that, even if Gregor wants to waste more time asking useless questions. Gregor lets the commando take over again.

"How did you know where I was?"

"I asked Borkus. He said you were at the shuttle platform and then a lot of other crazy stuff about how we'd never leave and...well I took off pretty fast at that point and found Mi and then everything blew up. I wasn't even thinking straight but I guess I took off towards it and she came up behind me with a speeder. Probably she went to make sure I didn't get killed.She wouldn't stop calling me an idiot the whole time. We couldn't even get near the place until almost dawn. She helped me dig you out. I thought you were dead but she insisted we haul you back in her speeder."

"Well I'm glad Mi was there."

 

He has no idea where that came from but it's suddenly very important to make sure Thena stops talking about rescuing him. It's making him feel all kinds of strange. Her baleful look turns hurt and then nasty. Gregor feels a desolate kind of triumph at his success.

 

She doesn't yell; the walls in these cheap, prefab units are thin, but the venom that suddenly laces her usual speaking voice is more than enough to get the point across. She's so upset now that she's slipped back into slurring her consonants like an Ocsinin two days from the home world. Some weirdly detached part of his commando-brain is suddenly kind of fascinated by the change.He's never heard her accent's this thick before.

"I'm sorry Gregor. I was scared. I am scared. You're trained to do this, or bred, or whatever. I'm not. I panicked. I found you all armored up in a burned out pile of slag. Half of which had been melted into kriffing glass and I couldn't imagine that you lived through that, that you could have done that. I didn't know what to do. Mi told me that we couldn't leave you there. She calmed me down. I'm sorry I didn't know what to do immediately. I don't do this every day you horrible barve. So fek you Gregor. I'm sorry, I am but fek you."

 

A week ago, two days ago, Gregor might have been struck dumb by a speech like that. He probably would have felt awful for scaring Thena and then making her angry. He does feel awful for that on some level but there's a new level to contend with now; several actually, and the versions of himself on each of those levels is angry right back. They're spoiling for a fight, for something familiar. Gregor's too off balance to stop them. He barely recognizes the rough voice that comes out of his mouth.

"Fine. Fek me then. You're scared? Fine too.But you know it's an ugly galaxy where bad things happen every day and nobody notices unless you're a galactic senator. So there's no use getting pissed off with me over it.You don't like that I'm not a meek diner hump you can lead on? That's too bad for you. I told you what I was as soon as I knew, as soon as I was able and you chose not to believe me. So now we're here. I don't care about that though, any of it.

" I need my guns back and I then am getting off this rock. If you can help me that's good but I don't need you so don't feel obligated. If Mi can help me then I'll get in contact with her myself if you're scared. In fact if you're that scared or upset then it's better if you leave now. I don't need this. I don't need you doing this. So decide what you want and do it fast."

Thena stares at him wide eyed. He refuses to give in to the ache in his chest her bewildered eyes are causing. She flushes up and sinks down into the chair, nodding a little bit to herself. Her lips moving silently.The ache spirals to his gut. He takes an involuntary step around the table and she looks up quickly. Her face, even with the bruises is perfectly, Ocsinin smooth. It's a little disconcerting. She starts to speak, rapidly, with no trace of an accent.

"I never meant to lead you on."

She sounds younger than he's ever heard her too, higher pitched and flat. Gregor finds himself wondering how old Thena is as she speaks. He's seen her scared and angry and hurt but this weird blankness is new. He wonders if it's a good sign but CC-5576-39is uneasily silent. She takes a slow breath and continues in her eerie droid-girl voice.

"I didn't mean for you to feel like that. I...I thought it would be...nice while it lasted. But I guess that doesn't matter does it because..."

She stops. Her mask slips a little. She twists her fingers together; eyes darting around the room for a minute. Then she takes a deep breath; closes her eyes, opens them again, looks him squarely in the face. It's like staring into twin black holes.

"Because you obviously got hurt. I hoped that if I broke it off you'd move on. I thought that we hadn't been together all that long...but I guess I was wrong."

"What are you talking about?"

She keeps looking at him, face still and controlled. He can't read anything on it. She keeps taking those deep slow breaths as she talks.

"Why you're so angry with me. It's because I didn't believe you, because you thought I was using you, like Borkus. And you're right. I was. I thought that you were a big, sweet man I could use to help me get by at Beerkin's the same way you helped me at the diner."

Gregor feels like she's punched him in the sternum. CC-5576-39 wants to rip her head off. He sits down instead. Thena keeps talking.

"I thought that you'd be okay afterward. Borkus wouldn't let Beerkin hurt you. He liked the work you did for him."

"He liked not paying me for it."

She nods,blandly; like he's commented on the weather.

"True."

 

It's not a good thing, the new dead eyed Thena. It's infinitely worse. It's going to kill him. His heart is going to shatter under the stress of being yanked in too many directions at once. He just wants his guns back and his plan to find a way off Abafar back too. Then maybe, in the unimaginably distant future of a few days from now, maybe then they can fix this. He still can't quite work out what this is or how and why it's broken but he knows it is on a level deeper than thought. He can feel the jagged edges stabbing into him.

 

"Why are you telling me this?"

Shabla osik he sounds like a kid but he can't not ask her. He's entirely confused; all of him is reeling.

"Because you're leaving. Because I...because...I'm sorry. I didn't know why I was going to the diner two days ago. I didn't know why I wanted Mi to help me find you or stop you maybe. I didn't know two days ago but...But now...Now it doesn't matter anymore because I didn't stop you. I guess I couldn't have by the time I found out what was happening. I saved your life and you saved mine and maybe that should make us even but I think I am a little obligated to you. I'll help you get your guns back and then I'll help you get off of Abafar."

 

It's like being in a fire fight naked and blindfolded. Every time Gregor thinks he's worked out what her next angle will be she hits at him from somewhere else. He's seared with a dozen holes and there's not a single thing he can do about it. He can't catch up to her, can't figure her out. It's like she's more than one person too. It's like two weeks ago when she stood in Mi's room and told him to leave and not come around anymore over something that he hadn't even done. Only it's worse.  
He'd thought back when he first regained his memory that being the commando again would take all of this pain away the way it took away the grinding despair of washing dishes for nothing. He thought it had but he realizes he's wrong. CC-5576-39 is as gutted as Gregor ever was.

 

"I don't understand?"

It's a plea more than a question. He's desperate for someone, even Thena who's somehow beating him up more thoroughly just by talking than Beerkin ever did with his nerf prod, to explain what's happening to him. She just gives him a bleak little shrug.

"You don't have to. Maybe you will later but you don't have to. Can I use your com?"

He stares at her.

"What?"

"Your com. I need it to contact Mi. Please."

He hands it to her, defeated. She's not going to explain why she's hurting him; how she's hurting him.He realizes neither Gregor nor CC-5576-39 actually want her to. He makes his voice as dead as hers.

"Tell her to get the weapons to the roof of the hotel two hours after sundown."


	11. Chapter 11

Eighteen Days Ago:

 

The seasons were still transitioning so the afternoon was more warm and dry than kiln-bleak as it would be in a few more weeks. The brighter sun was still a welcome change from the chilly, distant light it had been for the past five months. Other planets had lovely blossomings and regrowth; festivals held celebrating the glory of the season. There was nothing glorious about seasonal transitions, or any time really, on Abafar. Nevertheless that particular day was at least tolerably pleasant. And Gregor was off from work, and bored.

He lay on his bed re-reading his second book slate and found his eyes sliding out of focus. His brain clicked over and over like a hyperactive child’s. It presented him with images as though trying to suggest they go and do something. A forest of enormous trees that he was, bizarrely, looking down on from, as though he were standing in the canopy; huge red-purple mesas over an orange sunset desert; swirling star-scapes and, often at the end of a thought like mental punctuation, vast grey oceans that stretched from one horizon to the other, so real he could taste the salt spray and feel the impact of the waves under him.

Finally, exasperated, he sat up and tossed the slate away, pressing the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. The pewter colored ocean appeared again. He groaned in frustration.

"Look, there's no water and you know it so just stop, what's the matter with you?"

Now he was talking to himself, this afternoon was going decidedly badly. He found himself almost wishing he could go to work and just have something to occupy him. He realized what he was thinking and shuddered.

Hallucinating seas and forests was one thing, wanting to stand around for hours with his arms sunk in disgusting wash water was too far. He stood and crossed to the refrigeration unit. There was the remains of a bottle of liquor on the second shelf. He looked at it for a long moment.

He was trying to cut back on his drinking. Thena had teasingly complained about the smell of it on him. It had struck a nerve. Gregor sighed and rubbed his hands across his beard. He closed the 'fridge door and left, not bothering to put up the bed.

The streets were full of people wandering as aimlessly as he was. There were no parks in Pons Ora, no communal spaces or recreational areas. Gregor paused at an abandoned building site with a gaggle of other onlookers to watch a motley crew of younglings play five a side bollo ball. The ball was patched and starting to deflate, making a depressing clump sound as it was kicked and hit up and down the field. The younglings played with almost silent intensity, frowning and chasing each other with a joyless persistence.

Gregor felt a pinch in the back of his head, a recollection of playing a similar game himself as a child? He saw white, white walls and seemed to remember the feel of matting, squishy and slick, under bare feet. The game he remembered had been louder but somehow just as intense. He understood the need to win a point on a marrow-deep level. Fighting to prove by that small victory that you were good enough; worthy.

Gregor shook his head to clear the strange fog of memory. He disliked these flashes which were coming with ever more frequency. They never added up. Either they were hideously violent and made him sweat chill or strange and white and so hazy that every other person he saw in them seemed to have his face.

The bollo-ball game had devolved into a fist fight while he drifted. The crowd was closing in, animated now that there might be bloodshed. Gregor saw money exchange hands out of the corner of his eye. He shuddered; turned and shoved his way back through the growing crowd. The cheers of the spectators followed him for several blocks as others ran past him to see what the sport was. He felt slightly sick all of a sudden and stopped to lean against a shaded corner, half in an alley, closing his eyes and pressing his skull against the plaz of the wall.

A throaty, feminine giggle broke through the calm blackness behind his eyes. Gregor opened them and turned, searching for the source of it. A male...something, it was impossible to tell what species he was from the back; tall and yellowish green accompanied by small, pale skinned, black haired female walked down the street perpendicular to Gregor's alley. They had already passed him and were strolling companionably away.

The male bent down a little toward the female and said something. She tossed her head in what seemed to Gregor to be a precisely calculated manner that was probably meant to seem coy and laughed again, brightly, falsely. The male didn't seem to notice, or didn't care. He reached up and ran his long, green fingers along the hairline at the back of the female's neck. The female leaned toward him. Gregor saw that it was, again, a calculated movement.

Gregor realized he was out of the alley, following the pair down the street. They were walking a bit faster but he was fairly certain that it wasn't because they realized he was following them. They had a destination in mind. The female spoke, voice perfectly low and a little husky with a rehearsed urgency. He was still too far off to hear the words but the tone made his gut clench. The male paused and glanced down at the female. He looked up again and began to turn his oval head on his long neck, as if suddenly noticing his surroundings.

Gregor froze, then slid next to a delivery van parked on the street out of direct sight lines. The female smoothed her long blue skirt. Taking her time, letting her hands run over her thighs, emphasizing the almost shocking luxuriousness of the over dyedfabric; the way it slide against the skin of her palms, of her legs. The male stopped looking around; watched the girl closely instead and whatever protest he might have been formulating died.

The woman turned and began to walk again. The male followed a half step behind. They turned toward the "entertainment quarter." Gregor saw red. He didn't think about why. Didn't analyze what he was doing. He barreled out from behind the truck on the heels of the couple. He didn't try to hide the sound of his feet; could only hear the pounding of his own blood in his ears. He overtook them, grabbed the male and slammed a fist into his tentacled face. The female screamed and leapt aside. The male sputtered and spat green blood across Gregor's knuckles. The woman was shouting at him. He didn't recognize her voice. It was shrill, like a cat's screech. He stopped, fist half raised, and turned.

The sunlight caught her hair and set off the dyed purple highlights in it. Pale brown freckles stood out against her skin. Her blue eyes were wide and angry, showing white all the way around. She was still shouting at him.

"What the kriff are you doing you maniac? I'm under L'ysandr's protection his boys'll have you for trying to mug my gentleman."

Gregor straightened up, coming back to himself. The female stopped screeching to kneel beside the male now, patting his pockets. It struck Gregor that she seemed to be at least as keen to be sure his billfold was still there as to check and see if he were really hurt. She found the billfold, stroked her companion’s hand reassuringly and stood up and faced Gregor again. Her voice was calmer, more like the purr he'd heard earlier, low and conspiratorial. The male on the ground was still groaning loudly and probably couldn't hear her.

"Look darling, whatever's between you two why don't you leave it 'till tonight eh? I'll be done with him by then. Whatever he owes you I found him first and that gives me first cut right?"

Gregor nodded, seeing no point in trying to explain what had actually happened. He wasn't sure he even knew the answer. The girl looked at him through her long, lacquered eyelashes and batted them exactly three times.

"Maybe after you could look me up hmm? I'm called Cirelle, at L'ysandr's."

Gregor blinked in confusion but the girl was back beside the male in the dust, cooing and petting saccharinely. She helped him to his feet and shot Gregor an exaggerated glare.

"Clear off, bounder," but she winked behind her mark's back as she lead him away. Gregor could only stand in the street staring at his green smeared hand wondering what had come over him.

"Gregor? Gregor is that you?"

He turned toward the familiar voice, desperate for something that made sense again. Mi Syung was walking toward him. The sunlight gleamed on her cool green skin and lit the blue lines of tattoos at her temples until they were just the same shade as her eyes. Her dark gold dress seemed to be made of dozens of whisper thin panels that wafted back and forth to reveal tantalizing glimpses for her long, lean figure. He tried not to look too closely, which was always a problem when it came to the Mirialan girl.

Gregor liked Mi, or at least Thena liked Mi so Gregor thought he should as well. It was just, she was just so…friendly. She glided up beside him and hooked her arm through his in the overly familiar way she had that usually made him uncomfortable. Today he grabbed her like a life line. She frowned a little but kept her tone light.

"You scoping out the competition there? Stay away from her, she'll steal anything not nailed to the floor. You still have your money? She was awfully close to you."

"I didn't..." He touched his front pocket, his coins were still there. Mi saw him do it and laughed a little.

"Let's get you cleaned up hmm? You want a drink? It's getting kind of hot out here."

He didn't resist as she steered him down a side street on the left toward Beerkin's hotel.

 

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Mi had a room on the second floor. Gregor had never been inside it. He knew vaguely where it was as he'd seen Thena emerging from it with her on occasion. Thena claimed to like to get ready for work there because it was bigger, brighter and Mi was better than her at applying cosmetics. He wondered where Thena was now as Mi led him inside, pulling the curtain across the door. She waved a hand in the direction of her massive, gauzy bed. He sat on the very edge of it, rigid and straight backed.

Gregor looked around as the Mi vanished into the adjoining fresher for something. Thena was right, this room was at least half again as big as hers and it had two real windows, not just air slits up near the ceiling. It was painted a lovely, warm gold. The floor was covered with two large, soft rugs that Gregor tried vainly to avoidtreading on in his dusty boots.

Mi emerged from the fresher, another perk that Thena did not have. The fresher on the fourth floor was communal and down the hall. The Mirialan grabbed a low, embroidered stool and came to sit in front of him, taking his right hand in hers. She balanced a bowl of water on her lap and began to sponge off the congealed alien blood with a bit of soft, beige cloth.

"Are you saving up for something then?"

He was half hypnotized by the way the water was turning a clear, mossy green each time she put the rag back in it and didn't catch her question.

"What?"

"I said, are you day-lighting now too?"

"I don't know. No, actually. I was off today and went out?"

He didn't know why the phrase came out as a question. Mi paused, examined his now clean knuckles and set the cloth and bowl to one side. She cocked her chin to look up at him quizzically.

"Why'd you hit that man then?"

"I...I don't know."

She continued giving him a careful, sideways look.

"Are you okay Gregor?"

He nodded.

"Are you and Thena okay?"

He looked at her.

"Yeah, why?"

She shrugged.

"I haven't seen you here in, what, four day, five? You used to be around all the time. I couldn't get a second with my girl to get her to paint my nails."

Gregor couldn't tell if she were teasing or not. He decided to hedge his bets. She was Thena's good friend and it was probably smart to keep her happy.

"Sorry."

Mi waved his words away gracefully, smiling. Gregor smiled back a little, pleased he'd made the right call.

"No worries baby, I'm just busting you. But I mean it about you not being around. Is Borkus working you long hours?"

Gregor shrugged but couldn't help thinking about what Mi has said. She was right. He hadn't been around much recently. He'd also seen Thena at the diner less and less and when she was working at Beerkin's she was usually too busy to talk to him.

He'd tried to steal a kiss or get her alone for a few minutes to coordinate but she’d acted strange, distracted, whenever he'd tried. He'd chalked it up to occasional female inscrutability since he'd heard a number of patrons at both the diner and the club, describe such things. But now he realized that it wasn't just that he wasn't staying over. He hadn't actually talked to Thena since...since the night Gorwind shot Prebey and Haalvey.

The haze in his brain shifted, not exactly lifting but becoming maybe a bit less soupy here and there. He realized he wanted to see Thena with an almost visceral urgency; just see her, just be in a room with her and no other responsibilities. He wanted her there to distract him from things he couldn't think about properly, the oceans and the stars that chased each other through his brain with increasing frequency.He wanted to ask her why she was being distant so he could fix it. He stood up, accidentally knocking over Mi's stool.

"Oh, sorry Mi...I..."

He stooped quickly to help her up where she'd sprawled on the floor. Mi gives him a wry sort of frown and took his hand.

"Sometimes Gregor--"

She never finished, cut off by when Thena burst through the curtain without so much as knocking on the doorway.

"Mi I need to borrow--"

She froze. So did Gregor; arm still around Mi's waist as he'd gotten her halfway off the floor. Mi made an impatient noise and then got a look at his face, and Thena's. She coughedand wiggled out of his grip to face the other woman.

"Hey doll, look this isn't what--"

Thena opened her mouth, then closed it. A strange stillness came over her face as Gregor watched. He took a step away from Mi and cleared his throat. He didn't get the half-thought through sentence out before being interrupted again.

"Gregor! Gregor, I know you're in here. The door Gan saw you come in!"

Borkus's voice echoed through the courtyard.

Borkus didn't wait for an answer, the Gan obviously saw where Gregor went too. Suddenly to door was full of angry, grease-stained Sullustan. Thena jumped out of his way as he barreled in, almost knocking her down. Gregor took another, rapid step in her direction but she righted herself defiantly. She shook her head at him brusquely behind Borkus's back and stood away from him, arms crossed over her chest. Borkus ignored her and Mi both.

"What do you think you're doing? L'ysandr's already a pain to us and now you go an beat up one of her girl's customers in the street for no reason.”

Borkus gestured wildly, voice echoing a little off the high ceiling as he shouted.

“And don't try to tell me it was a side job, I asked Beerkin already. What are you trying? I have you out of that apartment of yours today if you're up to something. See if L'ysandr wants to put you up."

The room was silent for a long moment as everyone processed the incensed tirade. Gregor felt his brain attempting to shake off its torpor in the face of the sudden verbal attack. It was a slow process, like an old a speeder cycling up through gears. Gregor held up both hands, placating.

"I'm sorry Mr. Borkus. I...I don't know what happened I...I thought the guy...I thought it was Thena and."

"You thought Thena was a male Dhim?" Borkus snapped.

"What? No. The girl I thought he was with...I thought she was Thena."

It hit him suddenly that that was absolutely true. He had mistaken the woman, improbably perhaps but he had nevertheless, for Thena. His taxed brain that had refused until this second to acknowledge the truth sputtered and dropped a gear. Gregor winced at the obviousness of his motive and at its stupidity. Borkus obviously thought the excuse was idiotic as well. He sneered.

"You mistake someone else's girl for the one you've been sleeping with? You expect me to believe that?"

"It's true! I...it was a mistake."

Borkus still wouldn't buy it.

"What, she not putting out anymore?"

The Sullustan seemed to realize where he was for the first time, looking rapidly around the room.

"That's why you're in here? Couldn't get any on the street and now you're trying for another freebie from our stock?"

The statement was so shockingly wrong that Gregor could not think of a single thing to say in response. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Thena cock her head to one side, just a little bit; barely a movement of her chin up and to the left.

"Mr. Borkus."

Mi Syung's voice cut the thickening air of the room; more cultured sounding than usual, crisp and low. It was a tone Gregor had heard her use a few times before with pushy bar patrons. It was a voice that people fall silent to listen to. Borkus, not immune to it, shut up. Mi's eyes were wide and seemed to glow blue with her temper.

"Whatever reason Gregor had for what happened outside this is still my room and I know Mr. Beerkin has specifically requested that you not be on this floor at all anymore after...You need to leave."

"You telling me what to do, whore?"

"I am, yes. There are several paying guests currently in house and if they are inconvenienced I would have to tell Mr. Beerkin why."

Borkus growled. Mi ignored him.

"Is there a complaint from L'ysandr's people about the...misunderstanding?"

Borkus pouted revoltingly.

"No. But the girl just came by the diner and left this for Gregor."

He produced a slightly battered card of hardened flimsi.

"She came right into Power Sliders. I don't know who saw her. What if L'ysandr thinks I'm trying to poach his girls?"

Mi sneered elegantly at the blubbering Sullustan.

"I doubt he'd worry. Anyway, Gregor is a free man is he not? He can...do as he likes with whomever he chooses."

"He works for me!"

"Lower your voice. He is not working for you right now is he? Or when he hit that Dhim. It's just a stupid male dispute. You tell L'ysandr that if he asks."

Borkus glowered at Mi but knew when he'd been defeated. He rounded on Gregor instead, hoping to score one last point before slinking away.

"You hit somebody in the street again that I don't tell you to; you're fired. I don't care if you’re chasing tail or if it is your off times. And don't think," he brandished the card "you're getting this either."

With that he turned on his heel and clomped out.

Gregor, Mi and Thena stood in silence for more than a minute after he left, listening to his boots on the stairs, across the courtyard and out the front door. The silence stretched out after, and stretched, and stretched.

Gregor couldn't stand it anymore. He turned to look at Thena, relieved she was here so he didn't have to hunt all over the place for her. He wanted to get out of Mi's room and go somewhere quieter, more private. He’d missed her, more than he’d realized and had had enough of ridiculous, misinterpreted scenarios for the rest of the week at least.

Thena, though, had a strange look on her face, eyes narrowed. Mouth held tight in a grim line. She seemed to be looking somewhere in the middle distance. It made him uneasy to see. He spoke up anyway.

"Then--"

She held up a hand quite as imperiously as Mi ever could have. Gregor shut his mouth before he could think about it. An unpleasant, anticipatory twisting was starting low in his gut as he looked at Thena's stony expression. Mi Syung tried her luck next.

"Thena I mean it, this, earlier, it wasn't what it looks like. I fell off the stool and Gregor came to my rescue. Like he does, you know that."

Thena eyed the Mirialan girl carefully.

"I do. But earlier, in the street, you saw?"

Mi shrugged.

"He did hit that Dhim. I have no idea why."

Thena turned to Gregor. He rubbed the bristly hair at back of his neck and stared at his boots.

"I thought the girl was you. I did."

Thena was still keeping her face almost blank but he could read tension in the line of her mouth, could see something else that he couldn't name in the way her forehead smoothed out as she looked first at him, then down, then up to the ochre plastered ceiling. She took a slow, deep breath and spoke. She sounded angry, voice raised a little, tone clipped but it reminded him suddenly of the girl in the street; like it was rehearsed.

"You hit some guy because you thought I was out with him?"

Yes, of course. What else would I do?Answered a voice inside Gregor's brain. His mouth said.

"I don't know."

Mi walked into the space between them like she was about to referee a sparring match.

"Okay you two I think that you should take a few minutes, walk around the courtyard maybe, then go upstairs and have a talk in private. I've got a client in twenty minutes..."

Thena frowned with her mouth but her eyes have gone a bit bright, almost...relieved?

"No," she snapped. "We don't need to do that."

"Thena" Mi hissed.

Thena ignored her. She looked only at Gregor. Her voice rose precisely one octave but failed to waver even slightly. He was sure now that she was pretending to be angry but for the life of him he couldn’t understand why.

"You want pick up other girls that's fine. You can go do that. You've got no obligation to me."

Gregor shook his head. The room felt like it was simultaneously spinning and falling around him. How could she think that, Borkus was one thing but how could Thena think something so awful about him?

"Thena it wasn't that. I didn't. I wouldn't. I thought--"

Mi cut him off, rounding on her friend.

"What are you doing? He...” She narrowed her eyes suspiciously, staring hard into her friend’s face.

“Fierfek, you're just looking for an excu--"

Thena features lost all of their rehearsed anger and went icy. She returned Mi’s glare and held it. Mi stayed quiet, though her eyes were piercing as she looked at her friend. Thena continued as though neither the other woman nor Gregor had spoken.

"I think you should go Gregor."

It was like she'd shot him. He staggered a little. His voice came out strangled and wounded.

"Thena I didn't..."

She took another deep breath, tipped her chin up and set her jaw. She turned away from Mi, back toward him. Her face became a confusing mix of micro-expressions again. Gregor couldn't begin to understand them all at the moment, not with his own brain screaming denials so fast he could sort them into coherent sentences, not with the pain in his gut clawing its way up his ribs.

"Gregor, go home. I...We...Just go, just go away."

"What do you mean?" The question ripped past the block in his throat painfully. Thena flinched a little bit but stopped the motion almost before it started.

"Go away Gregor. Leave. I...I think we've come as far as we can. I want you to leave and...and not be..."

Her face wavered, eyes crinkling at the corners. Her breath was coming fast and shallow but she paused, held it, closed her eyes and then opened them again. She was back to blank and calm. It was almost as stunning as what was coming out of her mouth, the way she had just switched off whatever she was feeling. Her voice was dead and sounded a long way off to Gregor as she delivered her coup de grace.

"I don’t want to be with you anymore Gregor. And I think that’s true for you too, if you’re starting fights over other women"

He couldn't think straight, couldn’t see straight. How could his chest hurt like this when nobody had touched him? It throbbed worse than his hand; his vision pulsed in time to it. The sound of the blood in his ears was back, deafening him to whatever Mi seemed to be saying to him. He staggered for the door, unable to take anything else, afraid that if he heard another word from Thena he may actually start bleeding.

He was on the landing, then the stairs before his hearing makes a reappearance. He heard Mi shouting louder than Borkus had.

"--tupid! What is the matter with you? He's not kriffing Charise, you coward."

Thena said something back but Gregor couldn't make it out. The sound of her voice made the blood pound against his eardrums again. He stumbled across the courtyard and shouldered past the snickering Gan at the door.


	12. Chapter 12

Now:

Gregor waits on the roof of the building next to Beerkin's "hotel" or what used to be Beerkin's hotel because it seems unlikely to Gregor that you can own much of anything in hell. The thought forces a grim smirk across his face. He's spent the afternoon repairing his armor as best he can with the tools in his maintenance pouch. Thena got in touch with a very agitated Mi Syung and informed the other female of the plan.

 

Despite the yawning gap between him and Thena, the one that seems to grow every time he's tried to interact with her, he'd insisted on looking at her injuries. He had even managed to do so in a detached, professional way, no shaking hands and almost no painful flashes of remnant desire when he touched her skin. He'd finished cleaning off her face, splinted up her foot as best he could and given her most of his painkillers. Neither one of them had spoken during the entire process.  
When he'd finished she disappeared into the back room of the tiny miner's residence and hadn't re-emerged until just before sundown. She had stripped off the filthy, ripped, red dress and exchanged it for a standard miner's uniform that must have been in the wardrobe. The rough fabric of the unisex, unispecies coveralls had swallowed her, even rolled and belted in severely. He'd left the residence once so far to secure supplies for the coming evening and had given her a pair of stolen boots. They were the only piece of clothing that fit her now.

 

He took all of this in with sideways glances in the fading light. He had busied himself with sorting his armor for the fifth time so she wouldn't notice him looking at her. She stood for some time staring at the back of his head but he'd out-waited her.

 

She'd sighed, very quiet, and said that she'd be at the port in the green district, hanger third from the back. He hadn't said anything, just kept cleaning his armor. She'd had to come close to him to get out the door; the front room was so tiny. He'd felt a movement of air at his scalp, as though she'd reached out to touch his hair as she passed. He dropped his head to make sure she couldn't make contact. He'd looked up as a scrap of flimsi fluttered down toward his hand. Thena was standing in the door, hand still extended. She almost smiled at him.

 

"I wrote it down for you. Just to be sure."

 

He'd refused to almost smile back, merely pocketed the flimsi with a nod and got back to readjusting an already perfectly tuned system in his wrist sensor. So she'd left and he'd come here as soon as it was dark enough to pass unnoticed.  
He'd sent Mi the agreed upon com signal ten minutes ago. She currently has another five before he jumped through the skylight over the courtyard and got his guns back himself. He'd prefer to do that anyway but he doesn't want to injure Mi if it could be avoided. She was, after all, probably the one mostly responsible for saving his life. And yet he can't believe that, no matter how much he tries.

 

Thena's flaky, at best, he knows that. She's proven it to him several times in the past three weeks. She's selfish and willing to believe everybody but him for no reason he can understand. Sure, Mi's tried to justify it to him but Thena's never made the effort to explain herself. She just savaged him at the first sign of trouble and ran.  
But she also came back for him. If he can believe her story; she was the one who took the initiative to drag him off the landing platform. Even if she'd faltered and Mi had had to prop her up it had been Thena who got them both there in the first place. Why would she do that? Why would she throw him aside and then suddenly risk serious injury to save him when she was obviously terrified?

 

He told himself he didn't care, neither Gregor nor CC-5576-39 believe that but there's nothing he can do about it unless he wants to start some massive fight with Thena. It's appealing to the part of him that watched too much bad holo at the diner; get her mad and force her to confess what she's up to like a vid detective. But he's too tired for that and anyway life isn't holovids. It's messy and awful and Gregor's pretty certain he's had enough of "real" life. He's tired of being a purposeless nothing, tired of being nice, tired of living in a fog of emotional upheaval.

 

It doesn't matter anymore, or so he tells himself. He's a handful of hours from off this rock and then just a few days of avoiding Thena while they travel to someplace he can contact the Republic. He thinks he's probably survived worse. He can make it a little longer with one infuriating, inexplicable female who he can't stop himself caring about whenever he so much as looks at her.

 

And that's his salvation he thinks. Once he's back in the army there'll be no more of this civilian, feelings garbage; just orders and clarity and control. Thena will be well and truly out of sight and then he'll get her out of his head for good.  
Three minutes to go and he sees movement on the roof. He thinks maybe it's Mi but it's hard to tell in the dark. He doesn't want to fire up his buy'ce just yet, the light from the visor is more of a liability than his trouble seeing at the moment. He slides across the roof like a shadow, hops the half meter gap between the buildings like it's not there and lands softer than a hunting narglatch. He's relieved it's so easy, like breathing. He's never let himself doubt that he's a commando from the moment he saw his armor but it's still so hard to call up anything lucidly. His muscles remember though, perfectly. They give him the proof he craves.

 

The dark figure doesn't even sense him. He's almost certain it's Mi now; right height, right build; bulky canvas bag that she's treating very gently slung across her back. She's dressed oddly though. Mi Syung is a female's female. She takes hours to select just the right dress, make sure it hangs just so, make sure her hair and makeup are supernaturally flawless. Even naked, or mostly naked, she's never anything less than perfectly turned out.

 

This female is wearing sturdy looking trousers, shirt and tunic with big boots underneath. The vest is bulky and unflattering. It's myriad pockets appear to be crammed to overflowing with small objects. Despite being Mirialan he's never seen Mi wear a traditional head covering of any kind. This female has a severe cowl wrapped around her skull. Suddenly he's certain that something is wrong.

 

Gregor pops the helmet onto his head and blinks the targeting display up. He flattens himself against an air return unit and watches. The female, who's definitely Mi Syung and definitely acting weird, lays the bag down on the flat roof as though it may explode. Which, if it is his weapons, is a sensible thing for her to do. She's facing away from him, toward the building he's just left. She leans forward like she's trying to make out something on the dark roof opposite her and he sees his opening.

 

He's got one hand on the bag and the other across Mi's mouth before she has a chance to startle. He drags her back to the shadow of the air return with barely a scuff of boots. She's surprisingly cooperative, no flailing against him, no clawing at his armor. Still, even as she crouches next to him, he keeps his hand over her face.

 

No one pops up to shoot him full of holes. There's no movement on any of the other roofs, there's no unusual stillness either. The night carries on undisturbed; mating calls of drunk patrons wafting back from Beerkin's place, formerly Beerkin's place. Gregor wonders who the late, evidently unlamented, Sullustan's partners were. Whoever they are, they haven't wasted any time mopping up the claret and getting back to business.

 

It's reassuring somehow; life goes on, the local law enforcement, such as it is, remains un-mobilized but it's not enough to make him drop his guard. He leans in close to Mi, the pointed front of his helmet basically against her ear. She shivers when it brushes against the vulnerable skin there and he feels it all the way down his body. There's no way he couldn't the way he's got her pressed against him. But that's it, he feels her muscles contract due to sensory stimuli, takes note of it and moves on. He's happy with his lack of physical response. It must mean he'd getting back to his old self.

 

"Are you alone, nod yes or shake no"

She nods.

"Really?"

She huffs a little breath into his hand and nods again.

"Okay, I'm going to take my hand off your mouth, don't say anything. It's not time to chat."

She nods one more time. He drops his hand, still half expecting her to scream; he has his wrist mounted vibroblade partially sprung in anticipation of it. Mi doesn't scream. She does half turn and talk to him despite his instructions.

"So what's the plan?"

He blinks. It's hard to see Mi's expression in the dark but he thinks she looks expectant.

"I'm taking my guns and going to find Thena and then we're leaving."

Mi cocks her head.

"Great, how are we getting to Thena? I wouldn't recommend trying to waltz back through the 'hotel.' There's about fifty new guys Gorwind hired hanging around down there. I almost didn't make it up here on time because of them."

Gregor doesn't respond. Mi rolls her eyes.

"You didn't think I was just going to hand this," she motions to the bag on the roof next to her "over and then just let you leave. I'm in this up to my eyes baby and there is no kriffing way you and that idiot girl are leaving me here."

 

It hasn't occurred to Gregor that Mi would be tagging along now too but he realizes that was pretty stupid of him to overlook. Of course they can't leave her. Sooner or later, sooner probably, someone is going to figure out who helped get him back to Beerkin's. If Mi's still around it's going to go badly for her. Prebey's slack, bloody face appears in Gregor's mind. He shakes his head to clear it. CC-5576-39 is mildly annoyed by his sentimentality but he doesn't disagree. He just mentally rolls his eyes at the fact he now has two ridiculous females to worry about. The commando doesn't let Gregor get any softer though.

 

"I'm not carrying you on this. We get transport. We leave. I join back up with the army and you and The...you two are on your own."

Mi's watching him carefully, without saying anything. CC-5576-39 is upset at her stalling tactics.

"You got that Mi?"

"Yeah Gregor, I got that."

She's still giving him a weird, assessing kind of look. He ignores it and starts pulling each of his weapons out of the bag; strapping them to their accustomed places. It feels almost as good as being back in his armor. He comes across a nasty, sawn off slug thrower at the bottom of the sack.

"That's mine."

Mi's voice is barely audible but she's holding her hand out regally. He gives her the gun with a cocked chin, questioning. She smiles wickedly as she slots the piece into a leg holster.

"Girl has to look out for herself in time like these. Like you said. Are we going?"

He shrugs, stands, turns and jogs toward the edge of the roof. Mi keeps up with him. Her strong dancer's body making it relatively easy for her. She makes more noise than him as they run and it takes her two hesitant tries before she hops across the first gap in the roofs. She does better at the second and is almost as quick as him on the third. Still, by the time they get to the building backing the dusty, unused alley he'd used to get up here she's winded. He unwinds a five meter rope from the shadows under the water catchment tank and ties it carefully to the sturdiest looking of the tank supports.   
There's another dilemma he hadn't anticipated since he hadn't actually planned on taking Mi with him. He'd stolen the rope from a the back of the same mining supply dump that he'd gotten Thena's boots from. It's old and thin and he's not totally certain it will take his weight but he'd reckoned he's got armor for a reason if it breaks.

 

Mi's got no armor at all and while she's slender she's also tall and deceptively well muscled. Gregor guesses she probably weighs as much or more than Thena despite the difference in their builds. Not to mention fast roping is probably not something most strippers know how to do so she can't go down on her own.

"Mi,"

She's looking down at the rope dubiously and not paying attention. He grabs her elbow. She starts a bit but manages not to scream.

"Sorry, what?"

He squats down and motions to his back.

"Climb on."

She doesn't move. He glances over at her. The wretched creature is smirking at him.

"I thought you said you weren't going to carry me," she purrs.

Gregor rolls his eyes and then remembers that he's wearing his bucket. He growls a little.

"Just get on, and try not to choke me okay?"

Mi laughs, low in her throat, barely audible.

"Whatever you say big guy."

 

The trip down is a little faster than he's planned. He forgets to grip the rope harder to account for the extra weight for about a tenth of a second, but they make it down in one piece. He debates trying to get the rope back somehow but gives it up. It's wasted time and even if he could shoot it off the roofline a blaster bolt in the black night is a bigger risk than a mystery rope. Someone will probably just see it as a windfall. He grabs Mi's hand and they run through the night-cool streets.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

An hour later it's obvious that something has gone very wrong at the port in the green district, hanger third from the back. The place is dark and empty. Twenty minutes ago he risked upping the light on his helmet to read the scrap of flimsi Thena had scrawled the name of the place on. Ten minutes ago he asked Mi to double check it too. She agreed, they're in the right place but there's no Thena. Five minutes ago he left Mi in cover behind a pile of rocks and old ship debris He's reconnoitered the perimeter, twice; nothing, no one there.

 

He drops back behind Mi to find her muttering to herself and scanning the dark landing pad below with the sniper scope he left her. He puts a hand on her shoulder. She jumps a little, pebbles skitter down the slope and they both freeze. Nothing, no one there. Mi breathes out and looks up at him. Her eyes are huge and liquid black in the dark. He tells himself they don't remind him of Thena's; they've got discernible irises for one. Mi bites her lip.

 

"What?"

She shakes her head.

"Mi, what is it?"

She sighs again.

"I can't see the sloop."

He reaches up and pops his helmet off. The internal comms are still glitchy and occasionally mess with his hearing. He wants to be sharp. He smoothes his hair back and glances over at Mi again.

"The what?"

"Did she not tell you about the ship she got?"

"We haven't been talking much. I thought we were going to steal transport. I mean this is the only totally private-owned docking port in town right? So it's got less security and more craft modified for speed and stealth, I mean given the type of private citizen that tends to visit us."

Mi widened her eyes in exasperation.

"You thought...she didn't...you two, I swear...Fine, doesn't matter. Thena's got a ship, bought and paid for, well mostly."  
"How the shab did Thena buy a ship?"

"You think she working in that poodoo diner for kicks? Or was stripping because it was fun? Look just because I enjoy it doesn't mean everyone does."

"There's no way she made enough from Borkus or Beerkin to buy a ship, even if she was stripping."

He stops, realizing that there was indeed a way for Thena to earn enough for a ship while working for Beerkin. The thought makes him ill and angry. Mi catches his look.

"No, no, not that." She reaches out all of a sudden and touches his hand. He jerks away from her. He took several calming breaths and met her eyes. She smiled tentatively at him.

"Take it easy. It's not what you think."

He can't form words. He's not sure if it's because he's upset about the implications of Thena buying a shabla space-craft or if he's angry for letting himself get upset in the first place.

"You clean up pretty good don't you?" Mi asks, apropos of nothing. Gregor blinks in confusion

"I'm sorry?"

Mi runs a hand lightly over his barely stubbled jaw. He doesn't pull away this time; holds shocked-still.

"You look better. I think I'm beginning to see why Thena thought you were cute."

He feels his ears heat up and gruffly pushes her hand away.

"She said she didn't like it."

"She fears change."

"You're changing the subject."

Mi almost chuckles.

"Well spotted. Well I choose to keep changing it. Something's not right is it? You're all twitchy and I don't see the sloop in the orange painted bay."

"Which is where it usually is?"

"Yeah."

"What kind of a ship is it."

"Ghtroc 580 Light Freighter upgraded to a 2 class hyperdrive with G-720 components. I think the silly woman also sacrificed her shielding for an upgraded steering system but I can't be totally certain. What, why are you looking at me like that?"

Gregor realizes he's staring in honest, open mouthed surprise at Mi. She narrows her eyes.

"Dancing naked for money isn't the only thing I like to do."

Gregor blinks again.

"You're a pilot?"

"No, Thena's actually much better at piloting than I am. My four big brothers were very into engines. I liked to hang out with them...before."

She trails off frowning, looking away from him toward the still dark bays. Gregor wants to ask her more but the fierce closed-ness of her expression makes him think better of it.

"So Thena can fly a freighter, you're a mechanic. Why didn't you tell me?"

"You didn't exactly tell us you were Republic Army."

"I didn't remember."

Mi shrugs.

"Yeah, that's fair. So we didn't tell you, it's sand in the wind now. Let's not look backward on the dumb things we should have done. No good will come of it. I think we should figure out if Thena has actually just cut and run or if there's   
something more wrong."

"Cut and run?"

"Uh, yeah..."

"Why would she do that? She told me she'd help me get off Abafar."

"Gregor you know Thena."

"I think maybe I don't"

Mi shakes her head gently at him.

"You think what you want. But you know that the girl gets irrational when she's scared and I imagine this entire situation has her pretty spooked."

"You think she'd leave us though. You and me? Why?"

"Because that was the original plan," says a voice from the dark.

 

Mi jumps and lets out a strangled scream as Gregor clamps a hand over her mouth. He's turned around, blaster drawn before he finishes tightening his fingers over the Mirialan's jaw. Thena, crouched in the shadows of the boulder clump opposite, almost gets her head shot off. Her eyes widen a little when she sees the gun but she covers it with a very cool, fatalistic sort of smirk. Gregor is not amused.

"What the shab was that woman? Do you think this is a game. I nearly shot you."

"I noticed. And I also thought you'd hear me walking up here. But I guess you were chatting."

Mi wriggles angrily. Gregor lets go before she bites him. Thena doesn't seem surprised to see Mi here Gregor notes. Mi hisses waspishly.

"Knock it off, both of you. Where's Simlii Thena?"

Thena turns robotically toward Mi, expression still a weird, ironic rictus. It makes the downy hair on the backs of Gregor's arms fidget. Her voice though, dead and dry, makes his neck hair rise up too.

"We've got a problem. It seems Gorwind and company are smarter than they look. They traced the payments."

"Didn't you use cash-creds?" Growls Mi. Thena glares.

"Of course I did but, like I said, they're not as dumb as we hoped. They know Smilii's mine."

Mi cocked an eyebrow

"Okay, ours." Thena corrects. "They impounded it. I checked the magistrate frequencies for reasons but we're not officially wanted for murder, yet."

Mi doesn't seem surprised by her friends casual admission of guilt but her voice is a little loud as when she speaks.  
"Impounded, why not just put guards on it?"

Gregor agrees with Mi, impounding something requires rousing the local magistrates. It's much easier for Gorwind to just hunt him and Thena down and kill them.

"Wait, you said there's no charges of murder. How can they impound it if we're not accused of a crime?" Gregor asks.  
"Suspicion of smuggling stolen property." She answers smoothly.

Gregor almost asks what she stole and then realizes what he's about to say. She's stolen herself and, Mi too at this point. Legally speaking, Gorwind is in the right. He's probably also the one taking over Beerkin's little empire. He could just muscle in there but then he's vulnerable to somebody like L'sandyr coming in and making a claim that Gorwind's running a business illegally. He needs to establish a legal claim.

 

That's why there's no murder charge yet. Once one of those is leveled the magistrates and mining interests take over the pursuit of fugitives as well as any and all property associated with both the deceased and the accused as "evidence." However, if Gorwind can produce the suspects when he makes the accusation then the courts are only allowed to try the case, not investigate on their own. Once the convictions are secured, and they are always convictions, never acquittals; by Abafar law Gorwind, as the highest ranking, free sentient under contract to the deceased, in lieu of a family claim; which the late Borkus is certainly not making, get's the bosses property. The bastard is almost clever.

 

"So what now?" Mi asks.

Thena shakes her head.

"I don't know, Gregor, ideas?"

Gregor has a number of ideas but he hesitates.

"Are you asking me for a shooting option?"

Thena looks at him. She's stopped with the nihilistic smirk but her eyes seems even emptier now for her blank expression.  
"I am. Can you come up with one?"

"I need to see the impound area first and second..."

He almost doesn't say it but he realizes he has to. It's going to be impossible to keep going if he doesn't.

"Second, I need to talk to you. Both of you. I won't go into a hot zone without trusting the people at my back. I can't."

Thena drags her hands through her hair.

"We haven't got time for--"

"You're going to make time. I need to reece the impound lot anyway. That's going to take the rest of the night. You've got at least another day after that because I need to plan this one out. So I work out the lay of the land. Then we make this right, or as right as we can, and only then we get your ship."

Thena frowns.

"If I don't want to make it right?"

"Don't be a bitch. I can get that ship faster and easier by myself."

Mi gasps, very softly. Thena blinks, looses the 'too cool for this' expression. Gregor savors the warm curl of satisfaction at shocking her out of her blank act. But Thena's not giving up. She grabs for leverage.

"What about Mi?"

He looks over at Mi, who is wisely keeping her mouth shut during this exchange. She meets his eyes. She's not happy but she doesn't say anything either; staying the neutral party.

"Collateral damage. Acceptable loss."

Thena frowns. He stands his ground. She narrows her eyes, trying to see if he's bluffing. Gregor's not actually sure if he is or not so he knows Thena can't tell.

"You'd really leave her...us."

 

She's not asking a question but Gregor still answers her. He does want to make at least some part of this situation right. He meant that. He knows on a bone-deep level that if he doesn't at least try to leave on impartial ground it's going to bother him; he's not going to be able to forget and move on. The first step in the direction of resolution then is going to be honesty, from everyone, especially Thena.

 

"I will if you make me," he presses.

Thena's very quiet for a long time. So is Mi, whose also carefully not looking at either one of them. Gregor feels bad about dragging her into this but Thena started it and he's sick to death of her trying to manipulate him.

 

Now he'd laid it all out, clear as clear. Thena knows exactly what he wants and what happens to her, and now Mi, if she keeps trying to play him. He tries not to feel like an absolute barve about doing this to her; tells himself that she more than earned this payback, that it's the only way to start over fresh, with brutal honesty. He doesn't believe himself but CC-5576-39 has a sabacc face at least as good as Thena Kuora's. She bites her lip. He knows he's won. It makes him feel hollow.

 

"Okay," she says softly. "Okay. Do Mi and I go with you to the impound?"

"No, head back to the housing unit. The one we were at today. I'm better off on my own."

 

Thena swallows visibly and he realizes he's stated a pretty nasty truth. Mi looks at him, looks at Thena and shakes her head again, so gently he feels it in his chest; it hurts him. He stands up abruptly and locks the helmet back in place, turning away and moving toward the impound lot on the other side of the ridge. The rear sensors give him a blurry image of Mi standing and helping Thena to her feet. They're still glitchy, the rear sensors, that's why the image is blurry, not because of the stinging moisture in his eyes. He repeats that to himself like a mantra until he's far enough away for the image to slide into comfortingly impersonal infrared.


	13. Chapter 13

Now:

The Impound lot, only one in town and firmly controlled by the mining syndicates, is set in one of three small craters that were dug out of the powdery, white stone decades ago when Abafar was first settled. They sit at the corners of Pons Ora. The other two hold the Green Docking Port and the ruined Secondary Shipping Port.

 

Gregor wonders idly if he's destined to demolish each of the crater-areas in turn. Because there is absolutely no way to get to any ship in this lot without the application of violence; significant violence. Thena was right about needing a shooting option.

 

He can see where she paced around the perimeter. There are boot prints that could only be hers about a meter back from the glow of the lights placed high on the walls. From where he's standing the globes are about half a meter below his feet, near the lip of the crater. They throw a rime of bluish light up and out into the darkness, making it impossible to approach close to the edge of the crater without being seen.

 

He'd wondered in the past. Why were these ports were so closed off; what the logic was. It limited the type of ships that could land, thus why the Secondary Port had been made basically obsolete by the larger, prefab docking areas west of town that could take the bigger freighters. As of two days previous he had no more reason to wonder. They were brilliantly defensible on a small scale. Staring at the geyser of light tearing through the darkness from the Impound-crater Gregor knows it's going to take either a fully manned strike force or obscene luck to get into this one.

 

He hasn't got a strike force. He's got himself and a pair of females that he's never seen fire a weapon. Not to mention if the past three days are any indication of his general luckiness; if the past year is any indication really, they're in deep osik. He paces the perimeter, keeping to the shadows.

 

Thena wasn't wrong about Gorwind either. There's at least a half a dozen sentient guards patrolling the Impound in pairs. Each is well armed, four have laser rifles and the rest are packing nastily well-maintained looking slug throwers. They're alert and careful; quiet, professional. Which is just more bad news for him. He stops and stands, letting his brain slow down, letting his distraction drift until there's only him and the night and the problem at hand.

 

The guards are good, well paid and motivated, but there's something a bit off about them. Each pair walks a distinct circuit. There's a human and a Weequay who cover the left most perimeter, weave right through the larger, derelict vehicles and then cut straight across the center of the lot to the office at the entrance. A pair of Weequay mirror them on the right edge, and through the eastern most third of the smaller vehicles. A Gan and Bim cover another third of the small vehicles; the ones in the middle of the lot, the newer or more valuable ones.

 

He watches them work, trying to find the "offness." He finally recognizes it. There's a lack of coherence to their movements. They're doing as they've been told but nothing more. Gregor can't quite decide if that's an advantage yet or not. Instead he tries to work out which freighter is Thena's from Mi's brief description.

 

His gut sinks a little when he finds it. He can't be totally certain but he's willing to bet the it's the only Ghtroc 580 in the lot that's also guarded by a detail of gun-droids. There are four he can see and, in all likelihood since it looks like Gorwind is being damned clever, several inside as well. The only plus he notes is it's placement near the entrance. The rest of the lot is full and they obviously had to move the ship here in haste. A fourth pair of guards emerge from the Impound Office and Gregor feels a stir of something like hope coil up his neck.

 

It's Ceerak and Meez. They're more sober than he's ever seen them, and by far the most heavily armed of the bunch but they're still Meez and Ceerak. Gorwind maybe smart but he's let the ingrained Aqualish clannishness get the better of him. He's gone and given his most "trusted" associates charge of this job. And they are definitely in charge.

 

They swagger through the entire lot, stopping the hired guns as they find them to ask questions. It's impossible to make out what's said at this distance unless he activates his helmet's mic-sensor. He's keeping the systems at minimal functionality to be sure nobody picks up his power signature. Even so it's plainly easy to see how annoyed the other guards are with the Aqualish. Each time a pair gets stopped their body language all but screams contempt for the rank amateurs put in charge of this operation. Once the conversation is finished, moreover, the guns stalk off on their routes angry; not paying attention.

 

The "inspection" takes seven and one half standard minutes. Then Ceerak and Meez circle Smilii once, shoving contemptuously at the droids. One of them, Gregor thinks it's probably Meez since he recalls that one as being the taller of the pair, stalks up to the main hatch and strikes it. It's a strange thing to do, even for someone as laser-brained Meez.  
Gregor risks ramping up his helmet's telescopic display on a hunch. He watches the pantomime of the Aqualish taking turns fiddling with, hitting and, in once instance, kicking the hatch. Nothing happens.

 

The hunch metastasizes. Gregor risks a full spectrum scan of the ship and the ground beneath and behind it. The engine is black-cold. There's deep tread impressions leading right up to where Smilii's sitting. He scans further, finds a heat signature in an engine of another vehicle. It's cooling rapidly but it's unmistakably a tow-lug; the kind used to haul derelict or disabled vehicles. It's a big model too, one designed to help distressed mining equipment. He rates it's capacity at 300 tons at least.

 

Did they haul Smilii here? Why not just fly it? He can't be certain either way. He's going to have to ask Thena for more information about the ship.

 

The thought of Thena looms up out of his brain, darker than the night. It yanks him out of his combat-focus. He's disoriented by the weird combination of dread and anticipation that comes with it and almost staggers.

 

He looks at his feet to recover and see the ghost-outline of other prints here. Prints made by a heavy boot that occasionally show a deeper impression at the toes, as though the wearer tripped a little; probably because the shoes were stiff and unfamiliar to someone more used to cloth slippers or bare feet. Thena's boot prints.

 

Gregor braces for another wave of conflicting emotions but none comes. He notes the difference in the size of the impression next to his own foot. He sees Thena standing in this spot looking down at her ship in his mind's eye. He sees her chewing her lower lip, shifting from foot to foot.

 

Almost unconsciously he begins to follow the trail of her boot tracks around the lip of the Impound. He takes care not to obscure each one, stepping softly beside them. He imagines her face as she paced here, paused there to rock on the balls of her feet. It gets to a point where he can almost see her in front of him. It calms him, thinking about her; gives him back a kind of focus. He draws up the image of Thena, pulls it around himself like a cloak and continues to watch the crater.  
By the time the white haze of dawn is slowly climbing the northern horizon he has a plan. It's shaky and depends more on the reliability of the females than he likes but without them there's no way he can get to Smilii. It makes the coming day even more important; vital now where before it seemed more of an emotional convenience.

 

Everything is going to hinge on what Mi and especially Thena say and do. The uncertainty settles, leaden, into his gut. He dreads what's coming but there's nothing else to do but go back to the hab-units before the morning catches him. Still, he takes another handful of minutes to pace the perimeter of the crater one more time, carefully kicking dust over Thena's boot prints to hide her trail as he does.

 

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

He beats the sunrise by two minutes. It takes him fifteen minutes to run, cross country, from the Impound to the hab-units. It's a full minute faster than he'd calculated for. He feels keyed up but good; relieved and alive again.

 

His body feels like a perfectly made garment, the way it sometimes did before when he'd get stressed, but he's not disoriented by the feeling anymore. His brain and body are fully synced up, firing on all cores. Not even the creeping anxiety about what's waiting for him in the miners' housing can completely subdue the fierce joy that comes from knowing who and what he is. No matter what happens with Thena now he has a clarity of purpose; all he ever wanted.

 

He punches in the access code for the door. It slides back slowly, the fouling dust making the gears grind. He takes half a step into the shadowy room inside and is greeted by the darkened barrel of a hold-out blaster.

 

He realizes it's Thena pointing the gun at him even as his hand moves to disarm her. He precisely modulates his strength so that he presses on the tendons of her wrists hard enough to weaken her grip on the weapon; not hard enough to really do damage. It still hurts her but she had been threatening to shoot him.

 

She hisses in pain. Her arm wavers. She doesn't drop the gun though, and Gregor's a little proud of her for being tough. He steps forward, using his greater weight to knock her off balance. She trips backwards but manages to stagger out of a fall. He wraps a hand around the back of her neck and spins her before she's fully back on her feet.

 

The door slides shut behind him, cutting off the growing morning light. He's got Thena's left hand, her gun hand, in his right. Her throat's pressed lightly but significantly against his left forearm.

 

"I'll just assume you were being cautious shall I?" He whispers.

He meant for it to be a little bit playful. He's still hoped up on adrenaline and a good plan after all. His helmet's voice relay is still on the fritz though and his voice comes out of it metallically flat. Thena shudders and grips the gun harder. He sighs; should have known it wasn't going to go his way; nothing does.

 

"Take it easy. I'm not going to hurt you unless you really try to shoot me."

 

He loosens up on her throat, more just pressing her against him than threatening a choke hold. He lets go of her gun-hand altogether, freeing up his right hand to pull of his bucket. He's grateful the magnetic clip on his belt lets him secure it one handed. He's pretty sure Thena's not about to actually try to kill him but it never hurts to be very careful. He doesn't try to get her left arm back under his control after securing his helmet. He does, however, let her feel it press against the back of hers; a reassurance of what he'll do if he has to, but not an open threat.

 

Maybe his lucks not as bad as he thought. She seems to get the message or at least she relaxes her death grip on the blaster. He should let her go now. He's proven his point. He stays as he is though.

 

It's insane of him to enjoy being close to her, especially like this, especially given every awful thing that's happened between them and to them recently but he can't help himself. Without his helmet the smell of her skin and hair, sharpened by salt and half-washed sweat is warm and heady and almost as familiar as the weight of his armor. He hasn't realized how much he misses it, her scent, the feel of her against him. He drops his chin as discreetly as he can manage and tries to get another lungful of her; maybe the last one he's allowed.

 

Someone clears their throat from across the room. Gregor stiffens, head snapping up. He feels Thena straighten too, putting her weight back on her feet. He realizes she had been leaning against him. How long had she been doing that? He pushes the thought aside, not important, and, after a momentary hesitation, he drops his arm. Thena raises her right hand a little bit as his arm falls away, letting her fingertips brush against his armor. He feels electric shocks where they ghost across the gaps in the plates. He makes himself step away from her.

 

Mi Syung is leaning against the doorway to the back room, arms crossed over her chest, a rueful sort of smile playing at one edge of her mouth as she looks at them. She shakes her head a little as they move apart. Gregor idly wonders why she seems sad. She speaks up before he can ask her.

 

"So...you're back. Did you find out what you needed to know?"

There's more to the question than just an inquiry about the ship. Gregor can hear it but he can't quite grasp the rest of her meaning. It's tantalizingly close though. It's got something to do with what happens between the three of them now, he sure of it. Specifically what she wants to know though he can't tell. He decides to start with the obvious.

"You were right."

He meant to speak to Mi but finds himself addressing Thena.

"Gorwind's not stupid. He's hired at least six new guns, good ones and a contingent of security droids as well. They're on a pretty tight patrol circuit down at the Impound."

Thena nods, stiffly.

"Yeah, I thought so. So what do we do?"

He orders himself not to be so pleased that she's using the plural pronoun before he continues.

"I'm getting to it. There's one bright spot. Meez and Ceerak are in charge."

Mi and Thena smirk at the same time.

"They sober?" Mi asks.

"To the extent that I can tell, yes." He answers.

Thena frowns.

"How's that a bright spot? Those two haven't been sober since they were hatched. If Gorwind's dried them out it must be because he's really serious about stopping us."

She's a clever girl, Thena. He smiles at her a little. She gives him a pained sort of squint and looks at the floor quickly in response. It's better than nothing. He keeps talking.

"That's true but they're still Ceerak and Meez, which means--"

"They're mean and dumb as all haran." Mi finishes.

Gregor nods.

"Exactly. And from what I saw they're also bone-idle and getting bored."

Thena's narrowed her eyes at him but he thinks she's catching his meaning. Mi's a little bit behind though.  
"So how do we exploit that? Smuggle in booze and wait for them to get shit-faced and piss the mercs off enough to shoot them?" She asks.

"I hadn't thought of that actually." He reasons.

Mi suggestion isn't half bad really but he's not sure he can count of the professional killers losing their edge just because their employers representatives got drunk and 'had an accident involving a blaster'. He continues before Mi or Thena can speak up again.

"No, what I saw was that the teams are good but they're not really coherent. There's some Weequays, a human, a Bim and a Gan."

He sees Thena shiver a little at the mention of the Gan. He doesn't reach out for her, barely. He keeps talking to distract himself from wanting to touch her.

"I'm pretty certain the Weequays are a set. They talked to each other whenever the patrols crossed paths. The other three though, I think their lone wolves. They patrol in pairs but they don't check up on each other, except for the Weequays."

"So you want to isolate them? Kill them separately?" Thena asks.

Her voice is a little high pitched when she speaks but it's steady. He nods.

"Yeah."

"You said there were droids." Mi adds.

Gregor smirks.

"I specialize in droids. Don't worry about them."

"Yeah, okay. But what about Meez and Ceerak?" She presses.

"What about Gorwind?" Thena asks quietly.

"Ceerak and Meez hang out in the office near the gate. If we do this right they'll be the last to know what's going on and shouldn't give us too many problems. I didn't see Gorwind around. I'm betting he's got his hands full with the initial paperwork and payoffs."

"That won't take him too much longer probably. And, knowing Gore, he's going to want to get his progress updates personally." Thena adds.

She's calmer now, thinking as she leans one hip on the old table. Gregor nods, pleased she's keeping up. Mi crosses the room and sinks fluidly into one of the rickety chairs next to her.

"So we have to move fast?" Mi asks.

Gregor nods again. At least they're both smart, one less thing for him to worry about.

"Faster than fast. We need to move no later than tomorrow morning. Tonight would be good. This afternoon would be the best."

"So let's go. What do we do?" Thena asks, leaning toward him, eyes bright.

He almost tells her, almost falls for it but he's not the man he was two days ago, or even ten hours ago. He sees what she's up to. He keeps his voice low when he speaks.

"First you tell me why you were going to leave me here. You tell me why you decided to kick me aside for no good reason. You tell me what your game is or was. And then, maybe, I tell you my plan."

 

Thena freezes, then goes so stiff that she nearly falls off the edge of the table; her locked muscles unable to support her previous sprawl. Mi is out of her chair in less than a second, grabbing Thena and shoving her down into it. She leans close to her friend for a moment, eyes roaming over her face. She must be reassured that Thena's not about to faint or attack someone because she stands up and takes up Thena's previous position against the table. Gregor notes that the Mirialan is now between him and the other female. Mi's smart enough to say nothing though. The silence thickens as it sits. It's Thena who finally breaks it.

 

"Gregor..." Her voice rocks him.

It's plaintive, pleading and hurt. He wants to give in, just a little bit, just because it would be easier than the coming fight but he doesn't listen to the soft part of his heart.

"I'm sorr--No...I'm not sorry Thena. You're asking me to fight for you, go on the run with you. That takes trust. I don't trust you anymore. Maybe I shouldn't have trusted you before because I think you've been lying to me about everything from the start. I need to know why."

Thena is staring at the table but she does, eventually, speak up.

"Why do you need to know? I'm sorry about what I did but I can't undo it, can I? I give you my word that you can trust me now. I will help you. I'm not going to sell you out to Gorwind. I'm not."

 

He sighs. He wants so badly to believe her and leave things as they are but he can't. There's something inside of him that can't walk away on these terms. It's not quite Gregor and it's not quite CC-5576-39, it's almost like a mixture of both; the pragmatic and the emotional. He realizes that he can't do this standing up while she sits. It makes him feel too much like he's running an interrogation. He walks slowly to the table, pulls out the third chair and sits across from Thena.  
Mi turns her head slowly to watch him every step of the way. She only reaches for her own chair and sits when he's fully settled into his. She still doesn't speak. He does.

 

"Your word isn't all that great with me right now Then."

Thena flinches, opens her mouth, closes it and stares harder at her hands. Mi finally decides to step in.

"Gregor I get that you're angry, and you should be, but is this really--"

"Yes Mi, this is really what I need to know. I already told you I won't go into a fire fight without being able to totally trust the people I'm with."

Thena looks up at him, eyes slightly wild.

"Haven't I proved that to you? That you can trust me to fight for you? I killed someone today. I killed him and I told you everything, everything about the ship. I've stayed with you through all of this. I went back to Second Port for you. You'd be dead if I hadn't."

It's Gregor's turn to flinch, though he manages to do it inwardly. She has a point, several really but they still didn't add up. He still can't let go.

"Why did you come back? Why did you bring Mi? You'd already thrown me off, why come back?"

"Hey, I came with Thena because I was worried about her." Mi interrupts waspishly. Gregor shoots her a sharp look.

"Thena told me about how you were the one who convinced her I wasn't dead. Or was she lying about that too?"

Mi glares at him but with more petulance than venom.

"Yeah I did tell her to put you in the speeder. But it was her idea to go find you. I only told her to go over to the diner that day and work things out with you. The rest of it was all her."

 

Mi's comment spins him more than he'd like. He's supposed to be in control of the situation; the one getting his mentally tabulated list of questions answered. And now here comes Mi to screw it all up. He's forgotten that Thena said she was heading for the diner that day. His focus is now entirely back on Thena who’s, again, refusing to meet his eyes. It irks on a bone-deep level when she does that.

 

"Thena, look at me."

She hesitates. He's on the verge of asking again when she finally does it. He takes a deep breath and continues.

"Why were you going to diner?"

"Why do you think?"

"I don't know. I'm bloody new to all of this."

"I didn't know that at the time."

"You know it now. So spell it out for me."

She almost drops her eyes, they flicker down, but she thinks better of it and keeps them on his face.

"I was...I wanted to try to apologize for...Mi wouldn't leave off telling me I was stupid and a coward for leaving you, especially the way I did. She convinced me...I was going over there to tell you -- our plan, the ship -- to tell you everything. I was going to ask you to run with us rather than..."

"Rather than leave me here?"

She nods, miserably.

"So you didn't really think I was chasing other women. You broke off with me because you were going to leave. Why wouldn't you take me along?"

Thena shakes her head, eyes back on the table. Mi pipes up quickly.

"She said it was because you'd slow us down. Because you were too sweet."

"I'm a kriffing commando woman. If anything you'd slow me down!" He shouts at Thena.

Her head comes up fast, eyes flashing, ready for a fight.

"I didn't know that. You didn't know that, according to your story anyway. You had kriffing amnesia."

"I'd been kicking people's shabla teeth in at Beerkin's for weeks before then! I was doing that for you and you were--"

"Shut up both of you. You keep shouting someone's going to hear us." Mi snaps.

She keeps talking in the stunned silence that follows, trying to diffuse the situation.

"I agree with you Gregor. It's a stupid excuse Thena made up. I thought you'd be able to see through it because you seemed so sensible but I guess you are new to this. Thena didn't want you to come along because she was afraid of how close you two were, how quickly it was going--"

"Stop it Mi." Thena hisses.

"No, I won't idiot. I'll let you vape your own life to little pieces and lie and be generally awful to everybody else because you can't get over Charise being a disgusting shit but you're about to ruin my life too now. You heard him. Either we come clean or we're stuck here on our own and once Gorwind finds us...well judging by your face I don't think I need to elaborate. So it's time to grow up Thena. It's time to let the bad things that happened to you go and be brave and try to have another life."

"Charise and Gregor don't have anything to do with what's happening now." Thena snaps.

"I think I've got quite a lot to do with what's happening." Gregor shoots back.

Thena looks away from Mi to give him a death glare. He gives it right back. She narrows her eyes and speaks so quietly that both he and Mi lean forward to hear.

"You're not Gregor though, are you? You're somebody else, a clone commando, whatever that is. But you're not Gregor so it doesn't matter what I was trying to do or fix with him. I don't know you. But we're in the same boat now and I'll do whatever you need me to do if it gets us out of here."

He blinks, totally taken aback.

"I am Gregor. I'm a clone too. We're the same person."

Thena scoffs. The noise is so empty and cold Gregor actually shivers.

"Clones kill things. They fight. I've seen you fight now. I've seen what happens afterward. Gregor could rough people up but he was upset about it. He avoided it. You aren't even worried about it, about what happened or about what we're going to have to do. And you want to go back to killing, you want back in the army. I can't see Gregor in you anymore."

"You didn't seem overly bothered by having to kill people to get out of here when we were discussing it five minutes ago." 

He growls.

"That's because there's no other option. I was trying to sneak off without hurting anybody. But I can't now, we can't. I'm accepting reality, like you told me too today."

"So you think this is my fault? You're blaming me?"

She sighs and pulled at her hair.

"No, no I didn't mean...it's not your fault. If it's anybody's fault it's that captain who talked you into attacking Second Port."

"Colonel."

"Whatever."

"No, not whatever. He gave me back who I was...who I am. Do you really think it would have been better if I never remembered?"

"Yes."

He gapes at her. Mi fidgets in her seat, eyes flicking between the two of them but there's nothing she can do. There's no referee that can pull them off each other now. This fight's got to be seen through to the end.

"You'd rather I stayed a mumbling dishwasher?"

"I'd rather you stayed Gregor. But you didn't and you can't go back now and neither can I. You're a clone and I'm a murderer and we have to work together or all three of us are going to end up very unpleasantly dead."

 

Her skin's flushed again; an even, cool pink. She's breathing hard, taking shallow little gulps of air. She's also looking him dead in the eyes. He looks back and he sees pain and anger and regret all the way down. She's not hiding anymore. She's done what he asked and told him the truth. He was expecting it to hurt but this hollowed out, echoing pain inside him is worse than he'd imagined. It's twice as bad because he can see it mirrored in Thena's face. It's four times as bad again because she's reasoned it out correctly.

 

He's not Gregor anymore. He's not the man Thena knew. There is no going back; he can't forget again. He feels whole as a commando, feels part of a greater purpose. Ever since he held his buy'ce again he's been thinking of himself as a vital organelle in the leviathan of the Grand Army of the Republic.

 

But organelles don't have hearts or singular desires. Organelles can't survive on their own, but he can. He can have a whole other life, a boring, frustrating, messy, painful, delirious, funny and sometimes wonderful life totally independent of the GAR. He can be a vital organelle or he can be a man. But it seems he can't be both.

 

It's a brutal choice that's not even really a choice for him. He won't betray the army. He gave his word to the Colonel that he'd find his way back to the Republic and, man or clone or something in between, his word is everything to him.

 

If he breaks it he knows he'll hate himself. He'll regret what's been lost between him and Thena but thinks he can learn to live with it. Giving up on his promise to rejoin the army will kill him. Even if he could walk away from the GAR and his word it would probably be for nothing. Because he doesn't really have Thena anymore either.

 

He knows what has to be done. Thena's given him what he asked for even if the outcome wasn't what he had wanted. He actually has no idea what it was he was hoping to get out of this fight, closure maybe, but he's not sure. He said he wanted to make things right between them, he and Thena and maybe this is right.

 

Maybe this is as right as it's ever going to be. He has the truth from her, or enough of it anyway. He does feel that he can trust Thena now, and Mi too. He hurts but it feels clean somehow, like a wound that's healing rather than the festering throb he's been living with for weeks. He can hear the pain in his voice when he speaks but there's also surety.

 

"Okay. That's where we are then. Mi, are you good?"

Mi's blinking rapidly when she looks at him. She gives him a sad, tight lipped sort of smile and nods.

"Yeah. What are we going to do?"

He tells them. Goes over each stage of the plan carefully to make sure he's not asking too much. Mi and Thena each offer occasional, minor corrections but mostly they listen and repeat his instructions back to him when he asks them to. They drill through the whole thing more than a dozen times until Mi groans and puts her head flat on the table in exhaustion and Thena is beginning to visibly sway in her chair. He breaks off; gives them all four hours to sleep. Thena retreats to the back room immediately but Mi pauses.

 

He tries not to look at her but she walks over to him and touches the top of his head. Her smile is the same sad one she flashed him earlier.

 

"What is it Mi?"

"You know she cared right? Before? She really did even if she was stupid."

He can't force any words around the sudden knot in his throat for a few seconds.

"I thought she did but..."

His words come out in a rush, all gummed together with his exhaustion and emotions. Mi strokes his hair a little bit, fingers lightly brushing the slightly ragged ends.

"She did. She's just scared and confused. I'm really sorry."

He's not sure what she's sorry for but he nods. She drops her hand and walks to the closed door of the back room. She stops with her hand on the latch and turns to him.

"You guys were good together weren't you? I...look don't give up on it okay? If we get out of this don't just give up."

If they get out of this, and it's a big if, he can't see a way forward that doesn't involve giving up on him and Thena. But he can't say that to Mi, not when she's standing there looking at him with tears in her eyes.  
He nods. She shoots him a genuine, if watery, smile and vanishes into the back room. He lays out on the disintegrating foam seating unit in the front room and tries to mentally talk himself out of tears and into sleeping.


	14. Chapter 14

Now:

 

Seventeen minutes to sundown. Gregor moves across the southwestern lip of the impound crater quickly, bent almost in half. His armor is liberally coated with highly reflective salt-dust.

 

Ten minutes ago he scraped a shallow pit in the ground three quarters of a kilometer away, wet it down, and rolled in it like a nerf. He'd made Thena do the same, despite her objections. The mud has dried hard and white, instant camouflage.  
Thena's following behind him now, a meter farther from the edge, beyond the sight of any sensors. He'd carefully splinted and rebound her foot before they left the muddy ditch. She refused more pain killers, claiming she needed to be as aware as possible. He's pleased she's choosing to be hard. He stops, signaling Thena with a closed fit raised perpendicular to his shoulder blade. He trusts her to remember what it means.

 

Sixteen minutes to sundown. He lays flat on the ground and bellies to the lip of the Impound crater. Abafar's sun sinks, fading to a shimmering, electric blue. Every rough surface, outcrop, ridge, debris pile or bit of windblown garbage starts to throw long stripes of ink-black shadow across the ground. One side of each object is swallowed up by deep blackness. The other side, the sunward side, ignites with silver and lighting-purple reflected light. The contrast is dazzling, blinding. The old miners call this time the Hour of Draughts for the way the world seems to become suddenly an madman's checkerboard of light and shadow.

 

He drives three pitons into the rock near the lip of the crater. The sun will hit this position in fifteen seconds. Thena is at his elbow as suddenly as if he'd conjured her with a thought. She pushes him gently away and begins securing a lengths of stolen rope to the ceramic spikes.

 

He leaves her too it, slithering a meter farther north. He unslings his Deece and couching it against the meat of his shoulder; eye to the scope. His combat sense takes over and he can barely hear Thena swearing under her breath at the rope. He sweeps the floor of the Impound, left, right, left...there. The Bim-Gan team emerges from the port side of a sleek landspeeder. The Bim turns to run an admiring hand along the chassis. Gregor breathes out and squeezes the trigger.  
The sun glare hides the blue energy bolt perfectly. The Bim slumps forward into the open cockpit. The Gan takes a moment to realize his companion's stopped talking. Gregor waits until he starts to turn before putting a second bolt neatly through the side of his head.

 

"Strike," he mutters.

Thena looks up. He shakes his head and motions for the rope.

"Go, now. Hold on to the descender like I showed you. Squeeze the lever there, on the bottom and hold the end of the rope out to one side. Remember there's no pa--"

"Panic lock, I remember," she snaps nervously.

"Go, the sun's about to--"

He doesn't need to finish. The sunset glare washes over the ground around them, running down the uniformly cut sides of the crater to outline each cut in black shadow and white light that make the walls seem two dimensionally unreal. Thena breaths deep and jumped over the side.

 

He's worked to time this so that they've got maximum natural camouflage. He hasn't quite anticipated how good it would be; how it would impede him seeing what's happening on the walls of the crater. He has to gauge how Thena's doing on the descent by sound alone.

 

She goes slowly, careful to keep the rope from getting tangled near the bottom. She's been nervous about that since he told her what he needs her to do; been quietly reciting the steps of a proper rope descent to herself since they left the hab-unit. It pays off. The rope goes slack as she hits the ground and then begins to drift a little in the crosswind less than two seconds later. She's successfully unclipped. Gregor waits, scanning the crater floor with his scope, wishing for the thirty fifth time that they had com links.

 

Finally, finally he sees Thena running, bent low like he told her, toward the speeder. She's barely favoring her bad foot at all. She'll pay for that after. Gregor shrugs the thought off, prays to no one in particular that adrenaline is going to be enough for her to get the bodies under cover.

 

These two are the lightest of the mercs on duty, Bims having a number of nitrogen cavities in their body and the Gan with his species hollow bones. Thena should be able to at least roll them out of sight. She does a bit better actually. She hefts the Bim's lower half into the speeder cockpit before dragging a cover across it. She then rolls the Gan into the deep shade under the speeder. Adrenaline is a wonderful thing. Gregor can't stop to see if she makes it to the cover point he told her about.

 

He displaces, running along the edge of the crater, trusting the glare to keep everyone's head down below. The light bounces off the dried mud on his armor as he runs. The refraction off his plates is so intense it makes his eyes water a bit even through his polarized lenses. That's good though. He'll look like nothing more than an errant reflection to anyone glancing up.

 

He makes it to the northeast lip of the crater two seconds ahead of his mental timeline. He's running too hot, needs to calm down or he's going to screw up. He takes those two extra seconds to lay on the burning ground and pant out some of his nerves. He's managed to re-calibrate the internal cooling system of his armor to a certain extent but it's still a bit feeble. He can feel the sweat pooling low on his back. He ignores it and slides into position for the next round.

 

The custom, wire stock of the Deece feels good against his shoulder. The smell of the gun's a bit off, slightly too dusty since he's not had the time or resources to properly oil it but somehow the difference is comforting too. It's like him, coming back to working order a bit at a time. He fits the minute groove in his glove's right forefinger against the trigger that had worn it into the syth-hide; eye pressed to the scope.

 

He tries to check for Thena, focusing for a moment on the irregularity in the southern wall where he'd told her to hide. The crazy mix of light and shadow, coupled with her own liberal coating of dirt is doing its job however. He can't see her at all. A ghost of a worry that she hasn't made it chills him momentarily but he has not time for it. The Weequays are just crossing into the fast vanishing, sun lit portion of the crater below him.

 

They're strolling, as alert as their jobs dictate, but not on edge. Gregor takes that as proof that Thena's made it into hiding. He slides the bi-pod mount down from alongside the barrel and rocks it a little in the dust to get it secure.

 

The Weequays are two-thirds of the way across the sunny area. Gregor sets his eyes to the site again; breathes out. He catches the first on in the back just as his boot touches the shadow. He falls forward silently. The second one starts to turn, drawing his weapon. Gregor's already fired his second shot. It takes the Weequay in the throat. Gregor swears. He can hear the gurgling as the guard drops to his knees. He's falling forward, into the sunlight. Gregor fires again, catching him in the head this time. The impact knocks the Weequay backwards.

 

Gregor waits for another five seconds to see if anyone heard, if anyone's coming to check. He's cutting it fine by doing so. The sun's falling rapidly and he needs to move further north to support Mi.

 

No one appears. There's not shouts of alarm from below. He's waited as long as he can. A full quarter of the sun's bulk is now below the horizon. Eleven minutes until full dark. He has to go. Swearing silently he rolls, snapping the bi-pod back in place against the barrel, jumps to his feet and races north as the shadows lengthen across the Impound.  
He slides into place behind a bit of ancient construction scree that no one had ever bothered to clean up with no time to spare according to his internal clock. Breathlessly, he wedges his knee into a gap between the rocks and fumbled to hook the stabilizing strap of the rifle over his left arm. Just as he had the scope up to scan for the last pair of guns he hears Mi shouting.

 

Shab, he's late. No, he realizes, checking his HUD's chrono display, no she's early. Mi's jumped too soon. Gregor stamps down hard on his rising panic and glances toward the entrance. Since Simlii was secured with a specially coded gene-lock and Mi swore up and down that she couldn't fly even if her life depended on it he'd been forced to send Thena down into the Impound to get the ship off the ground. That left him to snipe and Mi alone to create the diversion and get the forcefield at the front gates down.

 

The plan had been for him to eliminate the hired guns first and then position himself high on the walls of the ramp leading down into the crater to pick off Ceerak and Meez when Mi lured them out. Once that was done he'd instructed Thena to set off an EMP grenade, the last one he had, in the midst of the guard-droids around Simlii. The ship, being fully powered down, would be unaffected by the blast. He and Mi would make their way to the ship in the fifteen seconds it would take for the after-effects of the EMP to dissipate. Thena would key open the ship, fire the engines up and they'd be blasting for orbital space four minutes later.

 

That had been the plan, all timed just so to take place during the confusing minutes between sunset and full dark when almost no one traveled far. It was a gamble but it was the only play they had. And now it was unraveling.

 

"Where is it? Meez are you here? I know you're here. Come out you sniveling puddle of--"

The door to the Impound office bursts open and the pair of Aqualish staggered out. They seem drunk. Gregor doesn't quite know whether to rejoice or scream at Mi to run. Mi stops two meters short of the office entrance, hands on her hips, glaring.

"What the fek do you want whore?" Shouts the Aqualish in the lead.

"Meez? Is that you?"

"It's Ceerak you stupid bitch. Can't you tell us apart."

"No, not particularly. All ugly looks the same to me."

Ceerak snarls and takes a menacing step towards Mi. Gregor tightens his finger on the trigger but Meez steps forward and grabs his arm.

"Leave off her."

"That's right, you're soft on this one ain't you?" Ceerak sneers. Meez ignores him. He seems almost sober or at least steady on his feet.

"What you want Mi?"

Mi cocks her left hip up sinuously and gives Meez a slightly sultry look.

"I want my ship."

"You ain't got a ship," snaps Ceerak. Meez glares at him.

"Thena does though," Mi says sweetly.

"You ain't Thena," says Meez, sounding slightly confused.

"No, but I fronted up half the scratch for it and now you've gone and killed her before she could pay me back. Ipso facto I want the ship as payment."

"You can't have the whole ship. You said you only paid for half," Meez points out reasonably. Mi gives a theatrical eye roll.  
"Well then you want to split it with me Meez?" She asks sarcastically.

Gregor lines up a shot on Ceerak's back. It turns out to be unnecessary. Meez draws his blaster and shoots Ceerak through the head. Mi screams and jumps back.

"Yeah, I do." He says and grabs her arm. "Let's get off this arsecleft baby."

 

Mi's casting panicked glances up the walls. Gregor waits. The force field gate's still up. They need it open for Mi to get to the ship. She was originally supposed to stun both Ceerak and Meez and steal the passcard but this will work too. Meez swipes his card across a sensor, there's a crackle and the smell of ozone as the shield becomes briefly visible and then drops. Meez starts to drag Mi deeper into the lot. Gregor lines up his shot.

 

The last pair of guards suddenly appear at a run. Gregor swears again. There's too many of them for him to pick off. The minute he gets one the others will dive for cover. He gets up and starts running for the top of the ramp. He's going to have to resort to a direct approach.

 

The sun's half down and he's probably clearly visible but it's too late to worry about that now. He pushes hard toward the edge, slinging his sniper rifle and then pulling his blaster free. He jumps off the edge of the wall as soon as he's sure he won't break anything in the fall. He rolls a meter up the ramp as he lands but is on his feet, turned around and barreling downhill before his brain registers the impact.

 

He's lucky. The approach is long and straight, anyone coming down the ramp is visible for at least the last fifteen meters. But none of the guards are looking at the ramp. There's a scrum around Meez and Mi. The Aqualish still has her tight by the upper arm. Mi's trying to subtly pull away from him. The human and the Weequay are motioning toward Ceerak's corpse. Gregor wills Meez not to go for a blaster. Mi's sure to be caught in the crossfire.

 

A sudden crackling explosion shakes the ground hard enough to stagger him when he's eight meters out. A purple-blue crackle of electricity shoots into the darkening sky, followed by another seismically deep rumble. One of the large ships in the far back of the Impound creaks and rocks as the actinic sparks from the EMP grenade dance over it.

 

Gregor realizes he's forgotten something in his careful planning. Bigger vehicles tend to have powered berthing clamps. They're simply too massive to be held by conventional ones. There's only the one slag barge in the blast radius but it's huge, easily the largest in the lot.

 

It stops rocking as the sparks faded, leaving the air ominously still for a moment before it's supports collapse with a shriek. The vast barge slides ponderously to the ground with an mammoth, clanging crash and a rolling shockwave of dust and debris that sends two smaller ships toppling over in its wake. The sparks catch something, a leaking fuel tank probably, on fire and suddenly the Impound explodes in a close approximation of the Second Port he'd assaulted three days ago.  
Gregor opens fire on the dumbfounded mercenaries. He sees Meez fall. Mi twists away and looks around for the source of the shots.

 

"Run! Get to Simlii," he shouts.

 

Mi turns before he finishes and sprints for the tangle of ships. The Weequay recovers enough to make a grab for her. Mi yanks her slug thrower out of her leg holster as his hands close on her cowl, yanking it free. She puts a slug through his knee and another through his chest. He topples to the ground with an expression of dull surprise on his face, Mi's dark headwrap still in his hand. Mi doesn't wait for Gregor to tell her to run again. She's gone into the flame-shadows an instant later.

 

He fires twice more as he runs, hitting the human mercenary in the chest. The man's wearing armor though. He staggers with the impacts but recovers fast enough to bring twin pistols to bear. Snarling Gregor slings his blaster and draws his own pistol for a close range fight. The human's smart though. He lunges for the gate controls, reactivating the force field seconds before Gregor crosses the threshold. Gregor's was forced into a desperate, skidding stop lest he smash face first into a wall of electrified air.

 

Meez is all but cut in half as it goes up, twitching and groaning nastily. The human watches his death throes impassively for a moment before looking at Gregor.

"So you're the big bad clone commando." He smirks and shrugs.

"I've seen better."

He glances behind him.

"That your girl? The one that ran off? She's pretty. I think I'll go introduce myself. You sit tight there. Dlem and I waved Beerkin as soon as Meez offed Ceerak. He should be here any minute."

Gregor snarls and fires impotently at the force field. The mercenary loses his smirk for a second. His eyes flick toward the field controls as if to reassure himself they're still secure. He takes a step back.

"Save your ammo friend. You're gonna need it."

He turns and strolls into the lot the way Mi had gone.

 

Gregor doesn't watch him go. He's turned around too and sprinting back up the ramp, visions of the rope on the southwest edge flashing behind his eyes. His heart's thumping wildly in his chest as he runs, rage and fear for Thena and Mi spurring him on too hard. He clears the top of the ramp far faster than his conditioned brain tells him he should be able to. His breathing is painfully ragged, hands starting to shake, leg burning. He's trying to listen through the whoosh of flames for the sound of gunfire or screaming behind him. He's so intent he misses the hum of speeders approaching.

 

The ground explodes in a cloud of laser-burned dust as he makes his turn southwest. Gregor spins into a crouch, blaster off his back and up. He doesn't pause to identify targets before he opens fire. He just sweeps the leading pair of speeders.  
He hits the front repulsor on the first. It explodes in sparks and black smoke; nose dropping to the ground. The momentum flips the speeder end over end. It's occupants are flung out in three different directions. One of them hits the edge of the second lead speeder, slowing it. Gregor squeezes the trigger again, holds it down, spraying the second speeder with a nearly continuous line of laser. The engine housing explodes. The rest of the vehicle follows it. The billowing cloud of foul-smelling chemical smoke is satisfying on a visceral level.

 

But his clip is empty, he never had a chance to recharge it after the attack on the Secondary Port, and there are three more speeders with gun mounts coming. Behind them he can make out a pair of modified single-operator models. There's no way he can take them all out with what he's got left. He squints into the fading sunlight and flame-glare and sees his opportunity. There, in the middle seat of the central speeder is a tall, heavy set Aqualish. It's Gorwind.  
He switches weapons fluidly, brining up his custom needler carbine. He was only going to get one shot at this and, though nastier than a blaster round, the needler's solid projectile had a shorter range. He sights up and waited for his chance to eliminate Gorwind.

 

Gregor smiles grimly behind his helmet. Once the cash cow was dead the mercs will stop hunting, turn on one another to get to the choicest bits of whatever's left. Even if he died Thena and Mi will be okay. It seems like he's simply destined to die on Abafar. At least he'll go down fighting. At least these bastards will know who and what he really was.

 

The speeders close to fifty meters. Then twenty. He needs ten more. He can see Gorwind in the center. The fool's got no helmet. All the better. The repeating blasters on the heavy speeders start to cycle up. Gregor breaths out.

 

The heavy speeders explode in a gout of red lasers and white flames. The concussion of air from a hovering ship behind him knocks Gregor flat. One of the single-operator bikes suicidally opens up with its canons, bolts stitching wildly around and above him. The ship opens up with an impressive display of precision targeting. Its twined laser sakers taking no more than three shots a piece to dismantle the pair of bikes. The sun falls below the horizon but the gloom of the oncoming night is pierced by dozens of bolts as the survivors return fire from the ground. It's a brave, futile effort. The canons above him cough and the ship pitches and yaws precisely, guns howling.

 

Gregor hears the whine of hydraulics as the pressure from the displaced air intensifies. The ship drops again. He rolls onto his back to see Simlli's ramp lowering. The inside of her belly-bay glows like the promise of a new day. A lithe, tall figure is holding onto a loading strap. It's Mi, she's waving frantically.

 

He drags himself to his feet and runs as best he can through the heavy air. He jumps, the pressure making him fall short, crushing his belly against the lips of the ramp. He's nauseous for a moment with the impact but forces himself to focus and haul his way up the grip-plates by his finger tips. Mi grabs his left arm when he's close enough, helping to haul him inside and slamming her hand down onto the emergency ramp controls.

 

The moment the safety lights go from orange to blue the ship accelerates into a seventy degree climb. Gregor just manages to jam his fingers into a gap in the deck plates to stop himself sliding up the bulkhead. Mi has no such luck and goes careening down the floor to be plastered to the closed ramp as Simlii picks up more speed. The atmosphere begins to howl against them as they rise. Gregor grits his teeth through a series of violent bumps that feel for all the world like the planet trying to buffett them back down to the surface. Simlii holds her course and, after no more than five minutes, the whining of the upper ionosphere fades to the silence of post-atmo space.

 

Simlii levels off. The artificial grav fields kick in as well, nulling out the feeling of acceleration. Mi slides down the ramp with a grunt, staggering to her feet. Gregor climbs to his as well. Every muscle in his body suddenly aches as his brain shuts off the flow of adrenaline. His helmet feels suffocatingly close. He yanks it off and lets it fall to the deck. Mi staggers toward him like a drunk.

 

"You're hurt," he says, eyeing her carefully.

Her face is spotted with blood. She raises a hand to it absently.

"What? Oh. It's not mine."

"Not yours? Whose is it?"

Mi giggles a little hysterically.

"The human mercenary. He grabbed me."

Gregor's fist clenches involuntarily. Mi continues, still dreamily rubbing the blood off her cheek.

"Thena shot him. With a slug thrower. I didn't even know she had one."

"It's mine. I gave it to her."

"Oh. That's great."

"I'm glad she could put it to good use. Mi..?"

"Hmm?"

"Maybe you should sit down."

"Yeah, good idea Gregor. Thanks."

He barely gets across the hangar to catch her as her legs go out from under her.

"Mi? Mi!"

She wriggles a little when he shakes her and snorts. His gut unclenches. He manages to haul the unconscious Mirialan forward toward where the berths should be on this type of ship. He maneuvers her carefully into the first one he finds, laying her gently on the bunk. Despite her insistence that she's unhurt he runs his hands gently down her arms and legs; over her torso, checking for contusions or blood-dampness. She's got some superficial burns were a laser went around her shoulder and her face and hair are matted with blood and tissue but she's right about it not being hers. The blood's red, not green. Satisfied he stands up and hobbles into the corridor.

 

He collides with a flushed looking Thena. He tries to catch his footing and finds himself leaning on a wall. He repeats his visual check for obvious injury with her, and allows himself a moment to drink her in as he does. She's streaked with mud and sweat and something viscous and greenish-black that his nose tells him is droid-lubricating fluid. Large sections of her hair have been singed off and are standing wildly on end. But there are no new bruises or cuts on her face. She's only favoring her left foot a little. He tries to smile at her but she's not paying attention. Instead, Thena's looking rapidly between him and Mi.

"Is she?"

"She's not hurt. Said you shot that human bastard with my Ripper. Well done," he says, or tries to say.

 

He gets half way through the word 'ripper' before Thena flings herself at him, crushing his mouth with hers. It's too much in his exhausted state. He topples over backwards. Thena stays with him, her teeth cutting his lip at the moment of impact. He grunts in pain and pushes against her, though he keeps one hand around her lower back unconsciously unwilling to let her get too far away.

 

"I swear you barve, you and fiery last kriffing stands. I barely pull you out of one and you make another" she hisses.

"It seemed like a good idea at the time," he says.

He meant to say something much tougher and manlier but he's so tired and he's cracked his head on the deck a little when Thena tackled him He grins up at her.

"Nice shooting by the way Ten'ika"

She grins back. It's a soppy, thank the Force you're alive, kind of grin that makes him feel warm and shivery all at once.  
"Yeah, targeting computers are a gift from on high."

She straightens her arms and looks down at him, face going straight and serious. His warm shivers start to ebb as his thought process starts to reengage. She cocks her head and opens her mouth to speak.

"Oh just kiss. You can be mad at each other later." Mi croaks from the bunk.

She's raised herself up on one elbow and is peering blearily out the open door. Thena sits upright, straddling his lap and looks over at her friend in concern. Gregor wants to be concerned too but his hormones have chosen to inform him that there is a lovely, soft female currently in a very pleasant position on top of him.

"Are you okay Mi? " He hears Thena ask through his sudden lust. Mi snorts rudely.

"I think she's in shock." Gregor whispers.

Thena frowns and twists to get a clearer view. Gregor's higher thought process, which had again been trying to reassert itself, is knocked cold by his resurrected libido.

"Just close the door if you two are going to make up right there okay?" Mi asks grouchily and flops back down on the bunk.

Thena gets one foot under her then. Gregor realizes she's going to get up. He decides he's not ready for her to do that yet.  
There's plenty of reasons why he should let her get up. Plenty of reasons why he should just let her walk away right now. There's so much between them, so much to do. He shouldn't complicate it more. But he's tired and he's once again fought through the impossible, not to mention almost dying for the third time in as many days. He just doesn't care about all of that other osik right now.

 

He kicks Thena's leg gently out from under her and pulls her back down for another kiss.


	15. Chapter 15

Three Standard Days Later in orbit around Asteroid Beacon ZK-3195:

 

"Gregor! Signal coming through."

 

Thena's voice echoes down the portside hall into the engine room where Gregor is attempting to help Mi repair the last of plasma couplings. Four had come loose during their mad sprint out of Abafar's orbit, this last one most disastrously. It's taken them three days to jury-rig a replacement. She doesn't particularly seem to need his help with this final installation. Instead she's been using the opportunity of temporary privacy while Thena scans the coms to 'chat' with him.

 

'Chat' being Mi's term for try to convince him to give Thena another try and stay on with the pair of them. Mi's persistence is getting slightly annoying. He straightens, turning toward the doorway into the corridor.

 

"What?" He calls back.

"Message!" Thena shouts again.

Mi eases herself out from under an engine panel, looking both hopeful and disappointed. She'd been trying to make some kind of complex point about people growing like plants before Thena interrupted. 

 

"Go on," she tells him, sitting up and wiping at the grease on her hands with a rag.

"We're all but done here. I just need to run one more test to make sure it's all grounded in correctly."

 

He nods and dodges out of the room just as Mi take a deep breath, as though she's about to say something more. It's not that he doesn't appreciate her concern, she's so loyal it's endearing, but she's also refusing to see sense. She was very disappointed to learn that he and Thena's initial glad-to-be-alive make-out session hadn't progressed past kissing. She's been getting increasingly desperate as they've approached this Asteroid beacon, the first point safely out of range of the Abafar system where they can try to make contact with the Republic.

 

He's told her that it's simply not possible for him to stay. He's pointed out that Thena's made it pretty clear that she wants no more to do with him romantically speaking. Not to mention the fact that she's been alternately ignoring or snapping at him since they cleared near-orbit makes him doubt she wants anything much to do with him at all. Mi's trotted out the usual excuses. Thena's upset, scared, traumatized, an idiot and so on.

 

He's actually inclined to believe the Mirialan the more he thinks about it. He's young himself but he's got the feeling he's both seen more and had more training in how to cope with the hard parts of the galaxy than Thena has. He can see that Thena's scared and angry. What he doesn't see how there's anything he can do about that in the time left to them. No matter what Mi says. It's got to be impossible to rebuild anything on the cracked foundation he and Thena have.

 

He turns left at the juncture of the engine corridor and the main hangar, stalks up the berth hallway and jumps up the three short steps into the cockpit. He stuffs the rag into the thigh pocket of his body suit with unneeded force and pulls his padded miner's jacket tighter. The cockpit's armored veiw-port shutters are up, giving them a view of the crater asteroid and bleeding heat into the void. Thena's curled in one of the pilot's seats, face bathed in blinking, green light from the message console. She doesn't turn to look at him, choosing instead to fiddle with a 'pad in her lap.

 

He hair's been cut almost as short as his. Though Thena claims it's because of the damage done by the EMP induced fires Mi's told him Thena made her cut off more than was strictly necessary. He suspects the change is more about forgetting Abafar, changing what she looks like to try to change who she is. He gets that. It still makes him a little bit sad though, that she feels the need to take drastic steps to distance herself from what's happened.

 

"When did it come through?" He asks, taking the other chair.

"Just now. It's live."

"What?"

"It's live. Someone on the other end wants to talk to you directly. They're waiting."

"Who is it? Is it the Colonel?"

She shakes her head.

"It's not your Colonel. It's another clone I think. He's wearing armor sort of like yours and he sounds...he sounds like you."  
"Another clone?"

"Yeah. Lieutenant, something starting with an 'N' and then a number."

She pushes up from the seat, swinging her legs forward.

"Where are you going?" He asks before he can stop himself.

He flinches inwardly, waiting for her to snap at him. He's a little surprised then when she only huffs out a small sigh and brushed her hair back from her eyes before looking at him.

"I thought you'd want...I was going to leave you take it in private."

He almost nods and let's her go but something stops him.

"No, it's fine. You'll have to know where we're going anyway. Stay."

She pauses, face intense as though she's trying to find the catch in his offer. But, eventually, she sinks back down into her chair, curling her legs up again and pressing deep into the threadbare padding. Gregor flicks the 'receive' button on the counsel.

 

A grainy, blue holo-image of a thirty centimeter high, fully armored clone shivers to life on the control panel. He's standing at parade rest, hands behind his back. His armor, Gregor notes with a tiny frisson of pleasure at his returning memory, is the lighter ARC trooper variant. It's topped with the traditional kama and pauldron. His helmet is surprisingly different from the ones Gregor remembers, more bulbous in the front with rounded rather than triangular edges. The clone drops his chin and leaned forward a bit.

 

"Three-Nine is that you?"

The voice is so remarkably like his own that it's startling. Gregor's forgotten what it's like to be constantly surrounded by copies of himself. There's a distant, comforting sort of familiarity deep in his brain as he recalls it. But it's overlaid with a creeping oddness.

"Er, yes, sir. It is. CC-5576-39, reporting back."

There's a momentary pause before the other clone starts laughing. He reaches up and pulls off his helmet, exposing features that, though similar, are less like his own than Gregor was expecting.

"Haar’chak man but you really are mir'shupur."

Gregor sees Thena bristle a little out of the corner of his eye.

"It means having a brain injury." He tells her, wondering why she could possibly be upset at someone she's never actually met speaking a language she doesn't understand.

 

The other clone peers around, trying to see out of the range of the hologram. Thena shifts back in her seat, working to keep out of sight. Gregor screws his face up in confusion at her. She waves him away and wraps her arms around her knees. The clone in the hologram interrupts.

 

"Who's there with you? Is that girl who made initial contact? Is she cleared? Are you simple; letting anyone listen in to sensitive intel?"

It's Gregor's turn to bristle now.

"I wouldn't be here without her. It's her ship and we're only setting up a rendezvous point, not discussing intelligence. This isn't a secure channel anyway."

The other clone smirks.

"I made it secure. But you're right. My apologies ma'am."

He nods blindly in Thena's direction. She shrugs sulkily and says nothing. Gregor gives her a sidelong look, which she ignores. He almost rolls his eyes.

"She accepts. Can we please get down to business?"

"There's the proper bastard we know and love," laughs the other clone.

" Do I have your coordinates accurate, you're stable-synchronous around ZK-3195?" He asks.

"That's right."

"How the shebs did you end up way out there?"

"We came from even farther."

"Farther than that? No wonder nobody could find you. Where were you?"

"Abafar."

 

The other clone whistles as though he's impressed. Gregor finds it annoying. He's slightly distressed to realize that he finds this entire conversation, and the clone in general, annoying. He keeps his thoughts to himself though as the other talks.

"I've barely heard of Abafar. You don't go half measure with anything huh Three-Nine? Even going MIA."

Gregor frowns. This isn't what he expected. He has a momentary pang of worry that he's forgotten far more about the workings of the GAR than he's realized. He tries to hide it but the effort is making him brusque and snappish.

"Lieutenant, my apologies but I don't seem to remember your name."

"Well you did spend more time with Kom'rk I suppose and, given your delicate mental condition, I'll try to contain my grief at you not remembering me. I'm Jaing Null ARC Ten. Lieutenant En-Ten if you're formal."

"Jaing?"

The name's passing familiar, leaving an impression of daredevil mischief and teeth clenching worry. Overlaying it is the whispered promise of barely restrained violence. Jaing, in his memory, is unpredictable, dangerous.

"At your service." the Null answers with a mockingly sketched bow.

" Also you don't have to call me sir. You're a captain after all Mr. Ambition whilst I remain a lowly lieutenant."

"You like being a lieutenant. Less responsibility. More opportunities for fun."

 

Jaing's grin gets somehow wider and he suddenly reminds Gregor of yet another clone, one even more aggravatingly flippant. He can't recall a name, just the ghost of a feeling. He tries to chase it down through the still shadowy corridors of his brain. It eludes him but leaves behind the a nebulous sort of warning about taking care with the handling of clones like Jaing.

 

There's a sudden bang from the holoprojection that makes Thena jump. Gregor grabs for her ominously creaking seat in case the ancient springs actually follow through on their threat to snap under rough treatment. She rights herself and shoots him a tiny smile. He resists the urge to smile back when he hears Jaing sigh dramatically.

 

"Hey, are you still there! I'm a busy man." Jaing shouts from the projection. He's swinging a heavy looking spanner in his left hand which he cracks against something below holo level with the same metallic bang. Apparently Gregor's jaunt through his spotty memory was taking too long for him. Gregor manages not to roll his eyes. Thena does though.

 

"Sorry Jaing. I was...processing." Gregor answers.  
"All coming back now is it?"

"A little at a time."

"Fair enough ner vod."

"So, where are you?"

"That's classified."

Gregor's eyes spin upward in frustration before he can stop them this time. He's beginning to remember Jaing more and more clearly, especially the way his attitude tended to get on one's nerves.

"Where can we meet you then?"

Jaing pauses to think, face going straight.

"How'd you get off Abafar? There's a Sep presence there isn't there? Because of the mining, fuel substance isn't it?"

"Rhydonium," Thena answers in an undertone. "Gregor knows all about rhydonium."

"What's that?" Jaing snaps, wrong footed by the sudden comment. 

Gregor glares at Thena, whose grinning, the wicked thing. He can't help himself from giving her back a rueful little smirk of his own. Jaing huffs.

"Hey, quit flirting. You're back in the army now son, pretend to be a professional."

He almost asks Jaing what he's pretending to be if Gregor's the professional. He decides against it, even if it would make Thena laugh. He's still shaky on his place in all of this, best to take the high road.

"Apologies Lieutenant. Yes, Abafar has...had, a separatist presence. I helped a Colonel, Zillkin Colonel I believe, and some droids get off planet about a week ago."

"Not Gascon and his mob?"

"Yes. Yes I think that was his name."

"I haven't gotten to read through their report yet but he said the entire mining operation was denied to the separatists. That was you?"

Gregor shrugs.

"Kandosii! And welcome back. I think I might have been wrong about you."

 

Gregor has no idea what to make of that. Instead he tries to steer the conversation back to useful topics.

"Rendezvous point?" He asks.

Jaing rubs his lower lip with his gloved thumb.

"I can meet you at Llanic, the shadow port. It's about eighteen parsecs spinwa--"

"I know where it is. When are you going to be there?" Thena cuts in.

Gregor looks over at her, she's got her arms crossed and is frowning at Jaing's image. Jaing loses his smile and cocks an eyebrow.

"Easy there mystery woman. You just worry about getting yourself to Llanic and I'll com you with details."

Gregor frowns in Thena's direction. She avoids his eyes by focusing on the 'pad, typing in coordinates and vector estimates.

"We'll be there in..."

He glances at Thena again. She holds up two fingers.

"Two days, standard." He tells Jaing since Thena's apparently decided not to talk at all for the moment.

"Right."

Jaing's still not smiling.

"I'll com you in two days."

 

The holo clicks off. Gregor rounds on Thena.

"Was there a particular reason you felt the need to be pissy with Jaing? He doesn't take that kind of thing well."

She's staring fixedly out at the rising bulk of the asteroid station. He waits. She stays silent.

"Thena..."

She turns to him.

"What is the matter with you?" He asks.

He's wanted to know for the past three days but every time he's tried to ask she's either left the room or found some unrelated reason to yell at him until he stalks off. He's finally fed-up enough with her to want a fight. Thena doesn't disappoint. She leans forward in her chair, eyes narrowed.

"I am perfectly capable of navigating my own ship. Even if your new friend thinks I'm not."

"He never said anything like that. He was giving general directions."

She hisses her contempt at that argument while punching coordinates into the astrogation module. Gregor sucks air through his teeth angrily.

"Thena--"

"Mi!"

Gregor flinches as she shouts.

"What?" Mi's voice floats back from deeper in the ship.

"Is the hyperdrive good for..." Thena checks the data the module spits out, "two short jumps?"

"The hyperdrive's fine." Mi answers quietly from the edge of the stairs.

Thena startles badly and knocks an empty caf mug off the top of the console. Gregor catches it before it hits the deck. Mi watches Thena with her head cocked to one side, eyes narrowed.

"The H-drive is great. I mean I did manage to finish the mods before we left. It's the plasma thrusters that are coming apart. Where are we going." She asks.

"Llanic." Gregor answers.

Mi nods.

"There's a real port there, right Thena? You been there before?"

 

Gregor is taken aback for a moment, then remembers that Thena's supposed to have banged around the galaxy a bit with the mysterious Charise before being dumped on Abafar. He watches her curiously, wondering if he'll get more information about her past. No joy, Thena's shaking her head.

 

"No. I've heard of it. I think Charise must have owed somebody there money. We avoided it."

Mi's called up the readout from the astrogation computer onto her palm 'pad.

"The Shadow-Port at Llanic. Pretentious." She says lightly.

Gregor smiles. Thena snorts softly.

"Jaing said he'd meet us there in two days." Gregor adds.

"Whose Jaing?" Mi asks absently, scanning through the 'pad.

"He did some special training with me. Actually he ran the special training. He and another Null ARC, Kom'rk. They're intelligence units."

Mi glances up at Thena with a slightly confused expression on her face.

"Null ARC?" She asks. Thena shrugs.

"I have no idea. He knows Gregor though, or he acted like he did. He seemed kind of a jerk to me."

Gregor considers tell Thena off for calling one of his brother-clones a jerk but Mi cuts him off before he can say anything.  
"Well, whatever the man is he's the only contact we have right?"

Gregor and Thena nod in unison.

"Okay then, we go. And, pretentiously named or not, this Shadow Port looks like it's got a pretty robust black market going on and I don't need to tell you that we are in dire need of some basic supplies. Not to mention engine components."

"Which components?" 

Gregor asks. He knows he shouldn't, it's not going to be his concern in two days. None the less, he can't help the curiosity and slight concern. Mi takes a breath before rattling on.

"New couplings for the plasma drives. Stabilizers too, the rotational vibration on the entry thrusters is barely in the safe range. Not to mention redundant parts for systems that are bound to break down."

"What does the price of all that leave over for supplies?" Thena asks.

"Depends on how much they charge us."

"Mi, we're all but out of food. If this Jaing had suggested anything farther into the mid-rim we'd be in real trouble. There's only basic medical supplies and we all need more than that right now, let alone for the long term. And then of course there's our total lack of other clothing."

"I'm aware of that but we've only got..." Mi checks the 'pad again "Another four thousand credits, that's basically three if we have to convert it to hard currency."

Thena rubs her hands over her eyes, leaning back in her chair and sighing.

"So we're going to have to find a transport job too while we're on Llanic."

"Is that a good idea?" Gregor asks. Thena rounds on him as Mi lets out a long suffering sigh.

"As opposed to what?" Thena all but spits.

"You're leaving so why don't you not worry about us? Mi and I have been planning this out for months we can take care of ourselves."

His temper flares even as he thinks he should take a deep breath, maybe count to fifty. He's half-shouting at her before the thought finishes itself.

"Do you think nobody's going to be looking for this ship? We blasted our way off of Abafar. Gorwind--"

"Is dead." Thena's on her feet now, almost shouting too.

"You don't know that. You didn't see the body." He growls.

"I was a bit busy getting us the fek out of there, if you missed it."

"You can't assume though, and if you've been planning for so long how is it you came to take off with about five days worth of food, no medical supplies, a half finished sub-light engine and less than four thousand creds?"

"We had to move our timeline up a bit because someone decided to start blowing holes in space ports."

"Sweet Force would you two knock it off already?" Mi shouts over them.

"You're like chags in a box." She huffs.

Thena shot her an icy look but Mi is un-cowed.

"Why are you even fighting? There's not a damned thing any of us can do about all of this. Yeah, we had to bang out faster than we thought because Gregor's a surprise super-soldier and we've got to take whatever job we can find on Llanic or we're going to, at best, get very skinny. But really here, let's be honest Thena. Gregor's leaving and that bothers the hell out you but you can't change that. So maybe we just accept reality and try to be a little bit pleasant to each other?"

"It doesn't bother me." Thena snaps petulantly.

Mi rolls her eyes.

"Sure, whatever you say. Well it bothers me then." She pointedly turns to look at Gregor.

"I'm going to miss you Gregor or whatever or name is or was. I wish you were staying."

Gregor's totally taken aback. He sputters for a second or more before remembering how to talk.

"I--uh...thanks Mi?"

"Don't mention it. But maybe, for me, could keep it to a dull bicker for the next two days huh?"

Mi's voice is surprisingly tremulous, her eyes bright and damp as looks between them. Gregor glances over at Thena. She's staring at the floor. She looks up after a moment, face pale and abashed.

"I'm sorry Mi." She whispers.

"I--you're right. We'll stop."

She looks at Gregor. There's a lump in his throat that prevents him from speaking so he just nods vigorously. Mi gives a damp chuckle.

"Don't go overboard or anything Then. I mean I know arguing is like, you're default setting so you don't have to be weird on my account."

Thena frowns.

"What are you--"

Gregor bursts out laughing at her grouchy tone. Mi followed suit. A few seconds later, Thena starts to giggle sheepishly as well. She runs her fingers through her newly shorn hair and smiles.

"Yeah. Okay. Dull bicker. Got it."

 

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

They agree to reset the ship's time to Mid-Rim standard for the duration of the trip to better adjust themselves to local conditions. That mean's they've added slightly more than an hour to the rest-cycle. The first day seems easy enough, they're all tired, the extra hour is a gift. But after a full twenty-five hours the new schedule is making Gregor itchy and restless.

 

He's used up his tranquilizers on Mi when she'd first woke up after the shock of leaving Abafar. She'd become hysterical at the sight of blood and brain matter and bone matting her hair. He and Thena had hauled her into the fresher and washed it out while she'd been knocked out. The pathetic, and mostly used up, med supplies don't have any tranqs at all. He's surprised it had basic bacta packs actually.

 

With no chemical means of alleviating his boredom he's tried to wear himself out with a workout. That doesn't go to plan. There's not much room for cardiovascular work in the small belly-bay and calisthenics were merely boring rather than tiring. His empty belly isn't helping the fight either.

 

They're down to one and half meals a day and even Mi, who eats like an avian, is having audible hunger pangs. He almost cheered when they'd dropped out of hyperspace to adjust for the second jump to Llanic four hours ago but Thena's melancholy, pensive silence as she entered the coordinates seemed catching.

 

Mi retreated to her bunk shortly thereafter. Leaving he and Thena alone in an increasingly impenetrable silence. He'd finally given up and gone to bed hoping to sleep through the rest of the discomfort of the trip.

 

It's been three hours now and sleep's still nowhere to be found. He hasn't heard anything from the cockpit or the common area on the starboard side though. He wonders, hopes really, that maybe Thena's gone to bed as well. He doesn't want to risk the painful sort of peace that's descended between them in the past day and a half. He listens out for any sound other than the soft groan of the hull under hyper-space pressure and the sigh of the engine. There's nothing. He sits up, groping for his boots in the dark. Just as he finds them his door chime sounds.

 

Gregor freezes. The chime sounds again and then, after a few second's pause, the door slides open a crack. For some reason he can only watch silently as Thena surreptitiously peers into the room. She gasps and jumps back when she sees him sitting up looking back at her. He's on his feet, palming the door fully open almost instantly. Thena's barely recovered from her startle and is standing in the hallway, chest heaving slightly, half glaring at him.

 

"What are you doing?" He asks, trying to keep his voice neutral.

"I was wondering if you were still awake. I kind of made these in case you were. I--I thought maybe we could...talk I guess."

He blinks, noticing the steaming mugs she's holding; one in each hand.

"What's that?"

"A peace offering?"

He cocks an eyebrow.

"My father always told me it was best to butter people up if you wanted something from them." She says in a brittlely   
cheerful voice. It makes him suspicious. He leans back in the door way, crossing his arms over his chest defensively.

"What do you want from me?"

"To talk?"

The false humor is gone from her voice. He sighs.

"Is there ever going to be a time when you aren't evasive Thena?" He asks.

She looks hurt. He rubs his eyes and feels slightly bad. She is trying after all.

"Never mind. What's in the mugs?"

"End of the protein cubes dissolved in water with two of the last four sugar cubes." She mutters. "It's kind of like breakfast?"  
He laughs. She shushes him.

"I think Mi's actually asleep. Can I come in?"

 

He steps back to let her. She hands him a mug and crosses over to the opposite bunk to sit down. He's surprised to be mildly disappointed she didn't want to sit on his. He settles onto his mattress and takes a sip of the drink. He grimaces. She laughs helplessly at his expression.

 

"Thena this is awful. It's like sweetened, liquefied chalk." He gasps.

"Yeah, you should try it without the sugar. When I was a kid my father used to make me beltaii tea when I couldn't sleep. Warm liquid is the best I can field at the moment."

 

They sit for several minutes slugging down the unpleasant but warm concoction. It makes Gregor both more hungry and slightly sad. He swirls the sticky, oozy dregs at the bottom of the mug, peering into them like they're going to give him answers. He's still looking down when he finally works up the nerve to speak.

 

"You're right."

"I'm sorry." Thena blurts out at the same moment.

"What?" They ask in unison.

He recovers faster.

"I said you were right. About me."

"About you what?"

"About me not being the same person...the man you met. I'm different."

She nods sadly. Looking down at her feet.

"Yeah. I'm still sorry I said that."

"Why?"

"Because it...because it's harder now." She answers in a hollow voice.

It's so cryptic, so purposefully vague. Gregor's iron grip on his temper slips. But rather than just anger he finds pain in his response, pain and anger that mix to form something unnamable.

"Harder than what?" He raps out, voice hard.

"Being mad over osik that didn't happen? You'd prefer we just fought and then walked off permanently even if the reasons behind it weren't true."

She shrugs miserably.

"Wouldn't it be easier then? To just be angry rather than...this?" She asks. Her voice is quiet and broken.

He feels a cold sort of comfort rub up against the ache beneath his sternum. It's a sensation that's become familiar to him over the past five days. Thena feels as poorly as he does; as mixed up as he does. And, like him, she's got no idea what to do about it. They're lost together. But neither can seem to figure out how to reach out to one another for help.  
He takes a deep breath and tries anyway. It feels like walking towards an ambush on a mined roadway. His stomach churn and his palms sweat but he goes forward.

 

"Is it easier for you to be angry at Charise?"

She looks at him, confusion evident on her face.

"It was...what do you know about Charise?"

"What Mi told me."

"Mi told you?"

 

She looks hurt, wary. Her face is starting to go still and blank. If he lets her retreat that far he'll never get through, there simply won't be enough time to break the walls back down. It's probably the smartest course of action to just let her go, let her retreat into herself again. He doesn't, he can't. He hears himself speaking, voice light and warm; coaxing almost and knows he's so far off the smart course of action it's useless to think about it anymore.

 

"Yeah, she's been on a campaign to put us back together for weeks. Did you not notice?"

Thena ducks her head to let her hair fall a little across her eyes; her new habit. But she smiles, briefly, and her voice is wry but warmer.

"Oh I noticed. I just didn't realize she was working on you to. What did she tell you about Charise?"

He decides to be honest, since he's given up on being smart.

"Not much. You hooked up when you were young. She was older and more glamorous and you fell pretty hard. Ran off with her. Which Mi tells me is understandable because she was the first person to treat you like...well like a person. She took advantage of your being young and in love with her in more ways than one for awhile until she needed some cash. And then she sold you to Borkus and left."

 

Thena looks stricken. She almost drops the mug but recovers herself and sets it very carefully on the floor. She hangs her head. She breathes in and out once, twice and then sits up, brushing her hair out of her face to look him in the eyes.

"Yeah, that's the general outline. She saw I could fly and she needed someone who would do whatever she wanted, no questions asked. I...I really thought she loved me and...I...Mi's right about me being stupid. It's just half-breed's an awful word you know? I was so tired of being that and she was..." Her voice cracks.

 

The chilly, painful thing in Gregor's chest cracks too. He can't help it. He's incapable of doing the smart, detached thing around Thena. He crosses the room, kneels down in front of her and presses his hands over hers. He wants to hold her but the rigid way she's sitting on the bunk tells him she wouldn't appreciate that much contact right now. He squeezes her hands rhythmically instead.

 

"Thena. Thena you don't have to tell me. I don't care about her, about what she did. Well, actually I do because I want to hunt down everybody that called you half-bred and punch them for making you an easy target."

Thena makes a choked kind of cough. It's alarming enough for him to look up from his careful examination of her fingers in his. She's got the start of her fractured smile on her face, though it looks like it's being impeded by bad memories.

"You...you wouldn't punch Charise?"

She sniffs hard, clearing her clogged breathing passages and then makes an attempt at a theatrical sniffle.

"And I thought you liked me."

He laughs and reaches out to hug her briefly. She softens her posture just a little as he does. He rocks back and takes her hands again.

"If you can joke about it... And I hadn't gotten to Charise yet. I think, after I punched everyone you grew up with, I'd find her and sell her to the worst Hutt I could find as a dancing girl."

Thena tries to smile again but her eyes are still so sad. He thinks it's not really because of memories of Charise now. He's honest again, even as it cuts him up beneath the skin.

"I...I wish you could have seen me as different from her. I didn't want to leave you or use you or anything like that."

"I know. I knew then. It...it scared me."

Scared, it scared me. That's what she's said. She's using the past tense. He cranes his head to try to get a glimpse of her   
eyes but her new fringe is hiding them again. He feels his face stretch into a pain-filled little smile.

"It kind of scares me too." He answers.

He doesn't know if his voice is shaking with hurt or hope. Not that he knows quite what he has to hope for at the moment.  
She takes her own shaky breath and sits up straighter, putting a little distance between them. She's doing it so she can see his eyes again. His chest contracts and then expands rapidly when she does.

"You are leaving though. You do want to leave now."

"It's not like that. I..."

He rocks back on his heels, letting go of her hands reluctantly. He runs his fingers into his hair, pulling at it in frustration.  
"I've told you why I have to go back. It's not the same thing at all. Can't you understand that?"

She sighs again and sets her jaw; squares her shoulders like she's about to take a punch and speaks.

"I'm not sure I can. Not the way you do. I wasn't bred to be anything. I...I don't know if I've got a higher calling to be anything the way you do. I've got myself and Mi and I had you but...beyond that? I don't know."

It's a hell of a statement and Gregor realizes he's not the only one struggling to speak truth here. He rubs the back of his head thoughtfully, right where his neck joins his skull. Thena lets out another choked sound. He looks up.

"What? What's the matter?"

There are two streaks of color across her cheek bones, like badly applied rouge. Her hand hovers near her lips. He thinks if she'd been human she'd probably be in tears.

"Greg--you used to do that...sometimes you do things and it's like you're Gregor again."

He springs to his feet and starts to pace. There's something clawing it's way to the front of his mind. Something bright and real. Something that's making him feel as terrified and ecstatic as the moment when Gascon gave him back his future. It's pressing on his teeth. He hasn't shaped the thought into words; doubts he could really. But it's time to be really brave. He opens his mouth and trusts the right words to come.

"I am still Gregor."

She looks confused.

"But you said before..."

Nevermind what I said before. I wasn't thinking about it right before. I was thinking that I was Gregor and then I was CC-5576-39. It's my designation number," he clarifies when Thena shakes her head.

"What I was called before. I think it was Three-Nine. But the point is I'm not one or the other, that's all just...semantics. I'm both of them."

She's still shaking her head.

"But you're not. Gregor wouldn't have done...most of this. And would CC or Three-Nine have...have..."

She seems to lose her ability to speak and merely motions vaguely toward herself. He understands, even if he hasn't got the words to describe it either.

"I don't kn--"

But then, suddenly, he does. There's no hesitation when he speaks now. His words tumble out of his mouth rapidly, trying to keep pace with his new, expanding knowledge.

"Yes he would have, because I did. And if you'd have had to fight your way off Abafar Gregor would have helped you. He would have because I would have."

He isn't really looking at her anymore. He's speaking as much for his own benefit as hers, giving his truth the reality of sound.

"And if I wasn't hurt, or if I remembered sooner I would still care about you and Mi, would still want you because--"

"But how is that possible?" Thena all but sobs, halting his flow of words.

"How are you two people?"

"I'm not. I'm one person. I'm a new person. That's how."

 

It's like the sun rising in his brain. He can see the two sides of himself merging and blending into something new, different, better. He laughs and grabs her off the bunk, spinning them in the small space between the two beds. Thena clutches at his shoulders.

 

"Gregor...stop...stop it. I'll puke on you if you don't"

He stops dead but doesn't let her go, doesn't stop smiling.

"Are you the same person you were when you first ended up on Abafar?" He asks.

"Yes." She answers in a churlish voice.

"No, no you're not."

She opens her mouth to argue but he's ahead of her.

"You're older and tougher."

"That's hardly the same thing." She manages to snap.

"But it is. Do you remember what you called yourself back when I first met you, during our third conversation."

She shakes her head, frowning.

"You remember all of our conversations?"

"Of course. But that's not important. What you said is."

"What did I say?"

"You called yourself three-pints Ocsi. You joked about something that you just told me was so horrible that it made you run off with a two bit spacer just to get away from hearing it. So you're different too, but you're not two people. You're not before Abafar and after Abafar Thena right? You're just Thena."

She's still staring at him like he's lost his mind but he can see something dawning way back in her eyes. He press the point home, determined that she understand.

"You're not even the same as you were last month when you tried to dump me."

"What's tried. I think I succeeded there." Thena responds sourly.

"And I'm really sorry." She adds sadly.

He laughs again.

"See, you are different. You're sorry. You weren't then."

 

She still looks unsure but it's a receding kind of uncertainty. He sees her jaw set itself again. She's girding herself up for one last tilt at his logic. She's preparing her very best argument, he can see it. He's ready for her. He gets off the line first.

 

"What about three days ago? You're different now aren't you."

Her lower lip quivers a bit and her color increases again.

"Yeah. I killed people. A lot of people I think."

That deflates his mood rapidly. Though an optimistic part of his brain points out that she just agreed with him. He wraps his arms around her and pulls her against his chest.

"Not a lot." He whispers to her.

She grimaces.

"I find one to be a lot."

He nods. Feeling a bit subdued but still full of the slowly simmering warmth of getting it, finally; of understanding what's going on.

"You're right. I didn't think about it like that. You did. And I'm sorry you had to. I'm sorry things had to go the way they did."

She sniffs but doesn't pull away. He strokes her hair, pressing a soft kiss against it after a moment.

"So what does this mean. That we're different." She whispers at length, face still pressed to his body glove. He rests his chin against her temple.

"I'm not really sure."

She pulls back. He grudgingly lets her lean an arm's length away but keeps his hands on her. She studies his face and he wonders if she's trying to see Gregor in CC-5576-39's features; wonders if she's been doing that ever since he woke up in her room with his memory kind of restored. He lets her look for as long as she needs to, almost praying that she can see him, really see him.

 

Her eyes soften a little bit, warm up by degrees and he dares to hope that he's gotten all the way through to her. He hopes because for the first time in weeks he feels like he looking at his Thena again. The one who liked to sleep on his chest and tease him and try to seduce him whenever there appeared to be a conveniently located broom-cupboard.  
"But you won't stay?" She asks.

 

There's a sound in his head like rushing water; his brain's scream of triumph. She does believe him. He can fix it, he has kriffing well fixed this thing between them. But his moment of victory is slowed by reality.

 

"I can't."

The words almost choke him on their way out. They feel so much bigger and heavier than anything he can remember saying before. His mouth tries to make up for it, tries to dissipate the heaviness of the room before his brain catches up.

"We've already com'd Jaing and, believe me you do not want that man tracking you down."

 

He winces at his horrifically feeble attempt at humor. He winces again when he realizes that he's left Thena a huge opportunity to get offended again with that statement; worried he's made everything he just said seem unimportant by joking about that. But Thena doesn't. She passes over his accidental slip. Instead, she cocks her head to the side and asks him, seriously.

 

"You remember that, about Jaing?"

"It's more of a really strong feeling that he's a proper bastard and doesn't like to be made to look foolish."

She smiles shakily. He smiles back, wider. She begins tracing abortive little swirls nervously over his chest.

"What do we do when you go back then?" She asks.

 

We, she said we. He can't stop smiling. He has no answer to her question, in fact he suspects the answer, if there is one, is probably going to be bad. But he can't stop smiling anyway because he just did the impossible again. And he did it without blasters or grenades or any help from his experience in war at all. He's done a normal thing; something a person might do. He's fixed a broken foundation. And maybe, just maybe, he's helping build something new; a new relationship with a non-clone, a plain, randomly born female, his female.

 

"I don't know." He answers at length.

He doesn't sugar coat it because this time around this relationship is going to be about honesty and trust.

"I can't remember if there are regulations about...relationships. I...either way I don't think we're going to just be able to carry on like this. I think we're going to be apart. Maybe for a long time."

She nods.

"Even if I turn into a camp follower I'm not a soldier. You're right."

"Camp follower?"

"It's an old term for people who...follow an army." She grimaces a little.

"Sorry, that wasn't very eloquent."

He chuckles

"That's fine. I don't know if the GAR has those though. Camp followers."

She nods again but she her face is deadly serious now. His smile waivers a little.

"Maybe that's a good thing. Because Gregor, I don't want to just follow you around. I want...I got this ship because I want to...I want to figure out what I want to do if that makes any sense?"

"Not really but I think maybe I can see what you want to say."

She swats at him playfully and his heart swells.

"I've never actually been on my own. Simlii means I can do whatever I want, go where ever I can, well as long as Mi agrees with me, but that's different. Don't you want that? Don't you want to just be free sometimes?"

He shakes his head, not smiling anymore but not sad either; thinking.

"I...I don't know. Right now...I want go back to the army. I want to be a part of something bigger than myself. I'm not sure I'd know how to be free."

"You've got a purpose." Thena says, hollowly echoing his earlier words.

"Yes. I've got a purpose. But Ten'ika, wars don't last forever."

She shivers.

"But Gregor, soldiers die."

"I'm not going to die."

"You have no way of knowing that."

"You have no way of knowing we're not going to fly through a star and die in the next minute."

"That is hardly the same thing! A star isn't trying to kill me."

"Okay, maybe I'll die. I doubt it, but I'll give you maybe. Do you want to just give up on...whatever this is because sometimes droids or Geonosians or some other damned things try to shoot me?"

"Geo-what?"

"Nasty, insectoid creatures. They make weapons, really unpleasant. And don't change the subject."

She's leaning back hard against his hands now but he refuses to let go. Her skin is pale and even again, marred only by the healing green-yellow of her bruises.

"I'm not changing the subject and I didn't say I wanted to give up. But I want to know what to do, how we go forward. I haven't got any idea what your army is like. What if there are regulations that say you can't...that we can't--"

 

He kisses her before she can finish because he's afraid of exactly that possibility. Because he wants to reassure himself that the course he sees himself on, should he run into such an obstacle, is the right one. He feels her mouth, plaint but not soft, yielding but somehow firm and responsive at the same time under his. He feels her wrap her arms around his neck and he knows. He pulls back, just enough to talk.

 

"Then I'll break them."

He can see the question forming on her lips. He answers her before she gives it voice.

"I can't say that I'll leave if there's a standing order against...this. Maybe, I don't know right now. But I won't let it stop me from being with you in whatever way I can be."

 

He has no idea where he came up with that. He's slightly amazed he managed it actually. Because, he realizes, as Thena stares at him in silent wonder that it is exactly the right thing to say. It is the exact expression of what he feels.  
She doesn't say anything in response. Maybe she can't think of anything to or maybe there just isn't anything else to be said. She reaches up, hands still fiercely grasping his neck and kisses him, hard. She presses her mouth to his ferociously and he feels his legs wobble. He staggers a bit and catches the back of his knees, unintentionally but luckily, on the edge of his bunk. He sits down too quickly.

 

Thena lands on his lap with a surprised little grunt and stops kissing him. He leans forward and starts to run his lips across each bruise on her face, kissing each discoloration as though that alone would heal what bacta couldn't. She sighs a little and holds very still to let him continue.

 

"Gregor?" She asks, a little breathless. He's loathe to stop running his mouth across her face.

"Hmm?"

"I'm so tired. Are you tired? Can we just...sleep?"

Part of his body wants to do a lot more than just sleep but he realizes the rest of him is exhausted. The stress over Thena, stress he'd refused to acknowledge for so long, was a heavy thing. He's tired from carrying it. He nuzzles her hair, inhaling the smell of soap and Thena, before pulling away.

"Yeah. I'd like to just sleep."

She smiles again and climbs off his lap, leaning forward to kiss him one more time before clambering over him. He kicks his boots back off while she tries to make sense of the tangled mess of blanket and sheet on his bed.

 

She manages to claw them into some satisfactory order just as he reaches out and shuts off the lights. He crawls carefully onto the mattress, trying to avoid elbowing Thena in the dark. He mostly succeeds. She doesn't complain though and sighs softly as she stretches out against him, head pillowed on his chest.

 

He wraps an arm around her shoulders and rolls a little so they're both on their sides; Thena cradled between him and the wall. He ducks his head close to her scalp; letting the warmth and smell of her wash through his brain. Just before he falls into a dreamless sleep he manages to think that, of everything he's about to give up, he might miss this the most.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes on Mandalorian:
> 
> mir'shupur: with head injury
> 
> Haar’chak: Damnit
> 
> Kandosii: Cool/Awesome


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final chapter it has everything, including a sink and Interlude 3

Llanic Tertius, known to spacers simply as Llanic. It is the only habitable body in its tripart system. It has a day side once every three-hundred and forty three standard years. And then the sun rises eighteen cycles only before the planet shifts back into its odd, tri-synchronous orbit with Llanic Ultra and Llanic Secundus.

 

Llanic Secundus's moon Nar-Thelop, which is nearly as large as Llanic Tertius, completes the orbital grouping. These three bodies block all but a dirty, diffuse sort of light from reaching Llanic Tertius. So the Shadow-Port is well named and actually locked in all but perpetual night.

 

It also, as Mi Syung pointed out, thrives as a way-point for outer-rim criminals wishing to do a little business in the comforting dark. There are still a few pockets of non or only semi-criminal activities. The refugee way station for example; run by some Inner-Rim sentientarian group. They provide food and medicines to the occasional transport of hapless victims of the never ending wars in the lawless rim of the galaxy.

 

With the more organized scrap of the Clone Wars winding up these days most of the unfortunate have noted that there's nowhere much for them to run to. They've started to just lump it out on their dusty home-rocks. They buy cut-rate munitions from the vast overflow of the big armies, hunker down, and make a fight.

 

The supplies still come into the way station though, paid for by rich In-Rimmers who want to show off their social consciousness to one another. In lieu of aiding non-existent, hapless nomads the bored, frustrated crews manning the stations have started to offer assistance to any of the spacers who have families in tow. There's been a sudden uptick in the number of married-with-offspring spacers on Llanic as a result.

 

There's even starting to be something like a governing body. It's not really elected per se, so much as self-selected by virtue of the wealth and influence of its members. Whichever of them blow into port at once form something like a council that makes sure the prices for goods and services aren't too crooked, that nobody messes with the missionaries lest someone from farther inwards take notice of this tidy little rock, and that the contractors maintaining the generator stations are paid well and on time. Llanic is starting to run like mildly gummed up clockwork; the Force is in its infinitude and all is right with this little corner of the galaxy.

 

If there are fewer refugee parties than usual their absence is being more than made up for by the dizzying array of Out-Rim spacers that clog the neon lit streets. Gregor sits in the cantina Jaing had specified; back to the wall, corner nearest the exit, and watches them flow past the large windows of the place. He tries to exercise his memory by naming those he recognizes but for each one he gets there are half a dozen he cannot even begin to guess at. Everyone is loud and armed but he's struck by the general lack of simmering violence. It's not exactly a place that where'd you'd keep your cred-fold in your back pocket but it's also not one where they expect bar fight vicious enough for windows to be kept small, lest combatants be thrown out or in them.

 

Gregor finds he likes Llanic despite himself. He'd like it a lot more if Jaing would show up. The man's eleven minutes late now. Gregor shifts, his new trousers rubbing audibly on the rough edge of the seat. He adjusts his jacket carefully. His armor is stashed on Simlii.

 

When they made port yesterday the first thing Mi and Thena did was go and get all of them new clothing. The blood and scorch stains on their previous gear was more than conspicuous. He kept his own jacket though, like a trophy. He's not sure how it managed to find its way on board in their escape but Thena'd tossed it to him as she sorted supplies on their first night off Abafar. He's a little bemused to find that he still likes it, memories and all.

 

It's fortunate he has it now because Llanic is chilly in the dark. He nurses his ale and checks the wall chrono for the fifteenth time. Twelve minutes late now. He's about to ping the com frequency Jaing sent him yesterday when a familiar figure jogs across the street and ducks into the green glass door.

 

Gregor watches Jaing scan the bar, recognize him and stroll casually in his direction. He wonders when the jolt of strangeness at seeing someone else with his face is going fade. He hopes it's soon. He's slightly worried that what's happened to him on Abafar has made him less of a clone.

 

Jaing pulls out a chair and drops into it, a wary sort of expression creasing his face. He shifts around a little to try to get his back to the wall and Gregor realizes the man is uncomfortable out of armor. He keeps twitching his shoulders as though he's unused to the freedom of motion gained by a lack of plating.

 

It makes Gregor feel better somehow, like he's not the only fish out of water here. He tries to smile and extends his hand.

"Jaing, I can't say that I remember you much but it's good to see you again."

Jaing fidgets for another second, rapidly scanning the room before he leans forward and grabbs Gregor's wrist. Gregor remembered this now, the Mando handshake, or more accurately numbingly tight forearm grab. He returned Jaing's grip for grip. The Null holds on for about two seconds longer than is strictly necessary for a greeting and, to Gregor's thinking, tries a little too hard to leave a bruise.

 

But when Jaing finally lets go he's smiling again. Gregor silently compliments himself for not showing weakness during their greeting. He's sure that's earned him some points with the other clone.

"Su cuy'gar Three-Nine."

"It's Gregor now."

Jaing cocks an eyebrow but his smile doesn't waiver. Gregor feels relief tingle down to his toes. He'd debated using that name now that he was back in the army. It was kind of appealing to think of it as something special; private, but in the end it felt too much like lying. He was Gregor now, for better or worse.

 

"Grey-Gor." Jaing says slowly, rolling the name around in his mouth like it's an exotic bite of food.

"What kind of a name is that?" He asks, eyebrow still up.

Gregor shrugs as nonchalantly as possible.

"Mine."

Jaing narrows his eyes for a moment before his smile goes impish.

"Your girl give it to you?"

"Gir--What?"

"Undesii, ner vod. It's fine. Where is the lovely lady anyway? She dump you already? She's not tired of clones is she because I might--"

The Null stops talking suddenly, face going straight, arm edging toward the top of his boot. There's a low, strange humming in the air. It takes Gregor a moment to realize he's making it; that he's sort of growling under his breath. He stops immediately.

"She...ah..."

Both Jaing's eyebrows are currently up by his hairline.

"Are you good Three-Ni--I mean Gregor?" His voice is very serious.

Gregor swallows hard, counts to ten, counts down from ten and then nods. He makes certain to keep his hands flat on the table, relaxed and clearly visible.

"She's around and I wanted to speak with you alone. One on one."

Jaing gives him a slightly skeptical, very careful once over before he puts his own hand up on the table. Gregor stays still, waiting. He's reasonably sure he can knock Jaing through the bar window if he needs to. He'll probably get stabbed or shot in the process but Thena and Mi picked up a refurbished med-droid last night so he can risk it. Luckily he doesn't have to.  
A Mandalorian in deep grey and blue striped armor pops through the entrance. He makes straight for their table. Gregor tenses, pushing his chair back. Jaing's hand grabs his wrist before Gregor registers that the other clone's moved. He holds Gregor's hand a fraction of an inch from the handle of his blaster. Holds it so tight and so still that the fingers start to go numb. Jaing catches his eye carefully, smiles with a pointed friendliness, and shakes his head.

 

The Mandalorian flops down into the third chair with a solid, metallic thump. Gregor relaxes his arm. Jaing lets him go. It's been less than three seconds. The Mandalorian reaches up and pops off his helmet, shaking his shaggy hair out with a contented sigh.

" Su cuy'gar Three-Nine." Kom'rk says, smacking him on the back in greeting.

Gregor blinks. Kom'rk grins and leans over to give Jaing another friendly slap hello.

"He still messed up Jaing or did you do something to him?" He asks.

Jaing's back to smirking like a well fed house cat.

"Nah, I think it's your ugly face scared him."

Kom'rk laughs. Gregor remembers that laugh; warm and fraternal. It unknots some of the tension between his shoulders. He tries to sit more easily in his chair.

"Actually, Jaing neglected to mention you'd be joining us. Or that you'd picked up that snazzy beskar gam since I saw you last. I was about to shoot you."

Kom'rk bats his eyes innocently in the worst impression of a blushing, holo-vid debutant Gregor's ever seen. He can't help but smile in response.

"Why ever would you want to shoot me?" Kom'rk asks in a simpering voice.

"Maybe more wing you, that's traditional Mando right?" Gregor responds after a moment's thought.

He's still a little unsure of his humor but relaxes more when both Nulls burst out laughing again.  
Kom'rk wipes at his streaming eyes.

"Huh, hey Jaing are you sure this is Three-Nine? Mr. Straight-Up-And-Down, All-Regs-All-The-Time? You sure it's not a clone or something?"

That one's actually amusing. Gregor makes himself laugh too. Jaing is holding his sides a little.

"I know, it shocked me too but he got himself a whole new personality in the interim. I blame his girl." He wheezes.

Kom'rk stops laughing and gives Gregor a sly sort of look.

"A girl huh? And here we were all torn up over your reported death only to find out you've gone and run off with a fine piece."

"I didn't--"

 

The Nulls keep their faces straight for almost half a second before they crack up again. Gregor frowns a bit ruefully. This entire exchange is starting to remind him of the last time he tried drinking with Mi, except not only can he not quite keep up with the smart-ass remarks but they're layered with a sheen of old and not terribly pleasant memories. It's a little jarring to realize that he might not have been the most pleasant person before he crashed on Abafar.

 

"Careful Kom'ika." Jaing's saying in a slightly breathless voice. "Three-Nine's a bit touchy about the mystery woman."

"It's Gregor." Gregor says, trying to stay calm in the face of the constant ribbing.

Surprisingly both Nulls stop giggling at that.

"Right, sorry Gregor. He goes by that now." Jaing says to Kom'rk.

Kom'rk nods firmly.

"Gregor, right. Got it."

 

There's a momentary silence as they try to work out where to start the rest of the conversation. A waitress, who's probably been watching them waiting for her moment, appears to gallantly take their orders. Kom'rk gets the house ale. Gregor keeps his half finished drink. Jaing flirts outrageously in an attempt to get a com freq off the woman. She's a stone-cold professional though and he's forced to settle for just an ale instead. She leaves to get their drinks and Kom'rk steps into the conversational breach, all business now.

 

"So, Gregor...I heard some of this from Jaing but can you debrief us quickly on your status?"

Gregor waits for a moment, giving Jaing time to turn back around from wistfully perusing the rear view of the disinterested waitress. Jaing flinches suddenly; Kom'rk must have kicked him under the table, and gives Gregor his undivided attention. Gregor takes a deep breath and tells them everything he can.

 

He's spent the past day and a half piecing together something like a coherent report with help from Mi and Thena. They've filled him in on his hazy early days on Abafar and had begun writing down the nonsensical seeming snippets of memory in an attempt to help him get his head in order. Thena especially had taken to it with a deadly seriousness that was touching. She was tirelessly determined to help him reclaim his old life now that she'd accepted the reality of the situation.  
He doesn't tell the Nulls that part. In fact he elides over Thena as much as possible. Instead he sticks to the most militarily useful facts. He describes the hellish final ambush on Sarrish. Tells them about his promise to Jax to come back with reinforcements. He describes what he can remember of dragging the dying Martell into the shuttle and steering it towards the fleet in orbit in a desperate attempt to make contact after all ground communication had been silenced. He doesn't remember what happened after that, only waking up alone in a blinding white light with a foul smelling Sullustan leaning over him.

 

The Nulls listen in silence for several minutes. They stay quiet as Gregor finishes and pauses to gulp the water that's appeared next to his ale some time during his rendition. Kom'rk leans over to squeeze his shoulder briefly. Jaing leans back in his chair, running his hands through his spiky hair.

 

"Did you get a read on what happened to Martell?" He asks.

Gregor's been dreading this question. He shakes his head; takes a moment to gather himself before answering further.

"I...he didn't make it into Pons Ora with me. The--, the women who helped get me off planet, they didn't see him. I...Borkus died before I could remember enough to ask him."

Gregor feels miserable, like a failure. He hangs his head and breaths deep. Kom'rk grabs his shoulder again.

"Undesii, you were banged up. It's a shabla miracle you lived at all. Don't get stuck in what might have happened to Martell. We checked his read-outs from Sarrish. The man was all but dead before you got into that shuttle. You did what you could."

"That doesn't really help." Gregor tells him bitterly.

"No, no it doesn't." Agrees Jaing.

Kom'rk raises his half empty ale.

" Ni su'cuyi, gar kyr'adyc, ni partayli, gar darasuum" He says. Jaing strikes his glass to his brother's

" Nu kyr'adyc, shi taab'echaaj'la" 

"Gar Serim." Gregor responds, not wholly certain it's the right thing to say.

 

But the Nulls nod, touch their glasses to his and they all drain the rest of their drinks. Another silence elapses, this one not so much awkward as pensive. The waitress returns, refills Jaing and Kom'rk's glasses. Gregor refuses a second ale. He toys with the empty cup for a moment before asking the next, painful question.

 

"So...what now?"

Jaing and Kom'rk share a long look before Kom'rk turns to Gregor.

"Well that depends..."

"On what?"

"On you ner vod." Jaing responds. Gregor's confused. His face must show it because Jaing carries on quickly, one hand in the air to forestall questions.

"I mean it's not like we're not pleased to see you alive and well. But..."

"But what? What are you saying, you won't have me back? I didn't desert. I was MIA, wounded."

It's Kom'rk's turn to hold up a placating hand.

"We know. It's not that. You can be back in the GAR as soon as you like it just...Three--I mean Gregor...Do you want to come back?"

Gregor blinks, nonplussed. It takes him a moment to calm down enough to speak.

"What else could I do? I'm a soldier."

The Nulls share another look, a sad-ish one. Jaing speaks up.

"So you are. But you're command's...well it's gone Gregor. The survivors are long transferred into other units. And as far as your pod goes...We've patched some squads back together in the past but there's not three or even two commandos at loose ends right now."

"I don't care." Gregor snaps, his voice sounding slightly desperate in his ears.

"I've been through too much getting here to give up now. I'll go back to being a aiwha-trooper if that's what I have to."

The Nulls seem taken totally aback.

"Gregor there's no need for that." Kom'rk says softly.

"Look there is something you can do. It's not standard or anything." Jaing pipes up suddenly.

"If you really want you could come on with us..." He continues.

Kom'rk's starting to nod in agreement with his brother, though his expression is still hesitant.

"Like before, with the special-ops training?" Gregor asks, a little lost still.

"Yeah, kind of, but you'd be in it pretty much solo, eventually. It's a big galaxy and not even we can be everywhere at once."

Kom'rk picks up the conversation seamlessly.

"You would shadow whichever of us needs an extra hand for awhile, until you're up to full speed and then it'd be missions on your own. Deep black, off the books. Do you think that's something you could do?"

If it got him back in the army Gregor would happily clean latrines with tooth brushes. It seems prudent not to appear overly eager though so he makes himself pause and look thoughtful. He's pretty certain already that he can work with Kom'rk and probably Jaing.

 

Not to mention that after the past week he's starting to think that out-side the box ops might actually be something like his forte. Whatever his past inclinations might have been Gregor thinks he proven his ability to improvise and work solo with limited resources. It's probably smart to ask questions about this unconventional offer though; so he does.

 

"I'd be working with you?"

Jaing shifts a little uncomfortably, and not just because he's out of armor.

"To start with I think. It'll be easier, since you know us from before. But you'd also probably end up working with the rest of the gang, our brothers."

"Are they like you?" Gregor asks.

"Well they're not as handsome as I am--" Jaing allows and yelps a little as Kom'rk kicks him again. Kom'rk picks up where Jaing left off, shooting his brother a filthy look.

"Mostly. Prudii's a bit dour, you may like him most, and A'den's easy to get on with. Mereel..."

Kom'rk just shruggs.

"Well you probably won't see a lot of him. He's deep in other ops at the moment. Same with Ordo. So you'll be okay. Especially since you seem to have pulled that stick out of your--"

He yelps now. Jaing's apparently decided to return the under-table-kicking favor. Gregor resists the urge to massage his temples.

"And then there's the problem of your girl." Jaing says, apropos of nothing.

Gregor snaps his head around to stare at the Null.

"What's Thena--What does that have to do with anything?"

"Well she can't come with you."

"Yes we worked that out, thanks." He snaps.

Jaing rolls his eyes.

"Well pardon me your highness. I just got here."

"Regardless," Kom'rk cuts in, giving each of them a warning look, "are you going to end it with her?"

Gregor starts to cross his arms over his chest but stops himself; realizing how petulant he's going to look sitting there like that. He settles for leaning a bit back in his chair and holding on to the edge of the table.

"I...that is...No. We weren't going to break it off."

Jaing and Kom'rk exchange another look. Gregor guesses this is where he gets to hear about such and such regulation against relationships. He sets his jaw, determined to see this through to the end. Kom'rk sighs, carding his hair with his fingers.

"You realize it's probably not going to work out anyway? I mean it's not as though you're going to be able to see much of each other or even write consistently. Most aruetiise females, or males actually, aruetiise in general, don't really understand what we do, even when you can tell them about it. It causes...tension over the long term."

"You don't even know her." Gregor snaps. "Why are you calling her that?"

Kom'rk looks at a entirely at a loss.

"Calling her what? Aruetiise? She is though."

Gregor guesses he might be missing some nuances of meaning behind the word but he can't mistake the lightly veiled contempt in the Null's voice when he uses it.

"Not to me. And we talked about all of this before I got here. She knows. And as far as it not working out how about you let us worry about that as it comes up."

"We can't have you compromised over a girl half-way across the galaxy." Snaps Jaing.

"I won't be. She can take care of herself. More than if you take her and her friend together." The Nulls still look dubious.

"Look, Gregor. I'm sure she's...nice" Begins Kom'rk. Jaing cuts him off.

"It's best if you just take what you can get on a case by case basis right? I mean we're not exactly cut out to be great at long term relationships, hazard of the genetics and the job."

"Is there a regulation that says I can't? One that says I can't try to have a long term relationship?" Gregor presses.

"Well, no, not really. I don't think anyone thought of it." Kom'rk allows.

Gregor decides it's best to just let that fact hang and says nothing. Jaing twitches his shoulders some more. Kom'rk runs his hands along the jagged blue slashes of his helmet. Gregor feels his com start to buzz in his pocket.

It's the girls checking in. They must have gotten the parts they needed. He'd asked them to com him and let him know when they were done in case he wanted to walk out of this meeting. He wonders if he does. But then something occurs to him.

"Would it help if you met them?" He asks.

Jaing goes completely still for the first time since he sat down, staring at Gregor in silence. Kom'rk's frowning at him. Gregor presses on.

"Look, come as meet them. Thena and Mi. You'll see. It's different, they're different."

The other clones are looking at each other so intensely Gregor wonders if maybe they're able to communicate without speaking, like Jedi. He's pretty sure they'll agree though because he's remembered something about Nulls.

 

They're all about personal relationships. There's no abstract with them. He's somehow made enough of an impression on them in the past that they're willing to give him a chance to work with them. Maybe if they meet Thena they'll be able to give her the benefit of the doubt. Or she'll do something prickly or inexplicable and they'll try to shoot her. It's a gamble but Gregor's coming to realize that most of life is anyway.

"We can have a meal, the five of us." He adds; incentivizing the potential meeting.

Something else he now remembers about Nulls, when in doubt, offer food. It works. Jaing's nodding. Kom'rk looks dubious but resigned to following his brother's lead.

"There's a lovely, greasy place two or three streets over. Have them meet us there." Jaing says, sounding almost enthusiastic.  
"They may have to drop some things off at their ship." Gregor answers.

"Ladies out on a shopping excursion while you do business eh?" Jaing cracks

"What'd they get?"

"Filloc Torque Stabilizers, a new electronic immobilizer and some plasma injectors" Gregor answers dryly, secretly pleased he can remember that much of the list.

Kom'rk barks a laugh.

"Girls after my own heart! Okay Greg'ika, you run back to that crate you came in on and collect your women folk. We'll be at..." He looks at Jaing

"Labakan Cafe, one hour." The other answers.

Gregor nods and stands. He grips forearms with each of them in turn.

"One hour, ner vode"

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

As it is they barely make it under the one hour mark.

 

For all that she’s mechanically gifted and has exactly one pair of trousers and a tunic that aren’t grease or blood stained, Mi Syung is and always will be, a thermonuclear grade female. She hears about the impending meeting with a pair of men who are going to be not so tacitly judging she, Thena and Gregor and there is no convincing Mi that make-up and hair styling are not required.

 

She does properly stow the engine parts first though so he’s reassured that she isn’t completely irrational. He wants to coach Thena a bit on looking people in the face and saying what you mean the first time but Mi has other ideas. She snatches Thena away as a second opinion and he’s left to cool his heels in the galley and contemplate the possible disaster ahead. He passes the time by packing and repacking his armor in its crate, running a cloth carefully over each piece; turning them over and over in his hands.

 

"Did somebody manhandle it while you were away? I blame Mi, her inner tech-head is reasserting herself."

Gregor jumps and turns to glare at Thena, though he's really more annoyed with himself; letting her sneak up on him like a shiny. It's lucky Jaing and Kom'rk are across town. He lays his vambrace gently back into the crate and closes it securely before standing up.

"What did you say Thena?"

She smirks a little.

"I asked what was the matter with your armor. You're petting it like it's your girl and somebody just goosed her. Should I leave you two alone again?"

He stalks over and telegraphs an obvious grab for her right arm. She dodges just the way he wanted her to. He grabs her around the waist and spins her off her feet, forcing her to clutch at him for balance.

"Oh, I get it." He breathes, pressing his mouth to hers, "You're trying to be funny again."

She laughs indignantly and slaps the side of his head.

"I'm very funny." She huffs.

"Says you."

He gooses her for good measure. She squeals and tries to slap him again. He grabs her hand and spins her the other direction, dipping her backwards like they're on Galactic Come-Dancing. He's trying to work out how he's supposed to passionately kiss her in this position, as he's seen on the vids, when Mi glides into the room.

"You're going to make us late love-pekos."

Thena twists kind of violently in Gregor's grip, trying to stand up and glare at Mi properly. Gregor tries valiantly to steady her but he's only a moderately enhanced human. She gets one good, mistaken kick in on his shin and he topples both of them to the floor. Thena hardly seems to notice, sputtering gamely as she tries to untangle her limbs from his.

"We're going to make us late, we are? Says Ms. let's-try-four-shades-of-lip-color-in-turn-before-deciding-on-the-first-on-after-all."

"I will have you know that it was at least partially my carefully selected lip color that helped us get such a deal on the rations."

Thena rolls her eyes, dragging herself awkwardly to her feet and offering Gregor a hand up.

"Yeah and the other part was you're strategically unzipped flight suit."

Mi smirks and runs her hands down her sides, emphasizing the belted in waist of her tunic. Which is also looking lower cut than Gregor remembers.

"I use the tools at my disposal. And don't act like you're above waving your ass at the Medical Aid Dispensor who happens to have something you want."

Gregor looks down at Thena with a cocked eyebrow. She grimaces and eyes the floor sheepishly.

"Well it was for a good cause."

"Hypocrite." Mi chirps happily.

"Slut." Thena shoots back.

Mi smiles and bows with much hand twirling.

"Proudly."

 

Gregor sighs, loudly. He's still not quite used to this friendly-insult game the girls so love. He's always worried that they're going to go too far and actually start fighting. He was kind of hoping to escape this sort of thing in the army. But, he realizes with a grimace, if Jaing and Kom'rk are anything to go by that may be an impossible dream.  
"Are we ready? Can we go?" He asks Thena and Mi.

 

Mi smiles her smooth, pretty smile. Thena, who's currently resisting all attempts by her friend to make her up, smiles too. Gregor's stomach does a little flip when she does.

"All set if you are." Mi says as Thena hooks her arm through his.

"We're on best behavior right? Don't want to scare your army friends." Thena adds.  
Gregor smirks.

"They're black-ops I think they're supposed to be tough."

"Supposed to be, being the operative phrase," laughs Mi, hooking her arm through Thena's.

 

Gregor laughs all the way down the ramp. They wander into the dusky afternoon and for a minute or two Gregor tries to imagine this as his life. He pretends they're on their way to meet a contact for a job and are just ordinary, everyday citizens of the galaxy. It's a nice thought but one he won't let himself dwell on right now. He glances down at Thena when she tightens her grip on his arm momentarily. She's looking lost in thought as well, her smile gone, eyes down turned. He tries to think of something to say to cheer her up.

 

"Hey Mi," he asks at length.

"Hmm?" The Mirialan cranes her head around Thena's shoulder.

"How is it you managed to bring four shades of lip color but no extra food?"

Mi huffs.

"I have my priorities in line, obviously."

"Six," says Thena.

"What?" Gregor asks, pleased that she's sounding amusedly grumpy rather than maudlin.

"She brought six shades of lip color. Two were for me."

Gregor snorts.  
"Like I said," Mi answers with immense, wounded dignity. "Priorities."

"Yeah, I mean what if we were set upon by attractive pirates?" Grouses Thena.

"Exactly." Mi reasons.

She winks roguishly at Gregor and gives Thena's elbow a friendly squeeze.

"Also, did you know that they can be used as lubricant for engine parts in a pinch?"

They all laugh at that one.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Labakan Cafe is indeed a greasy, dingy mess that, from the outside gives Gregor a momentary pause. Thena does it too, clutching at him a little harder. It's Mi that snaps them out of it. She drops Thena's arm and takes a few steps to her front, making a show of examining the facade.

 

"Huh, it's strange to see a place like this so wholesomely clean and smelling like actual food, don't you think?"  
Thena's chuckle is a little forced and high pitched but she loosens her death grip on Gregor's arm.

"Yeah, weird." She answers.

Gregor's trying to think of something to say himself when the chromed front door of the place opens. Jaing pokes his head out.

"Come on kids. I'm starving to death here."

Gregor takes a step forward only to be stopped by Thena, who's frozen in place. He turns to look at her. She's staring at Jaing, alarmed. Oh, he hadn't thought of this. He's told both of them all about the clone army, or as much as he remembers about it. They know he's one of millions of identical seeming men. But to see such a thing is probably jarring, especially for a woman who didn't believe he could be a clone at all a week ago.

 

Jaing's starting to look unhappy at Thena's reaction. Gregor catches Mi's eye and tries to make it clear that someone not him need to make a move. Mi, thank the Force, gets it. She swallows whatever misgivings she might have, fixes her best smile in place and marches up to Jaing.

 

"Hello there, Gregor didn't actually tell us which one you were. I'm Mi Syung Laar."

She extended a slim, green hand. Jaing pauses, eyeing her for a moment. Gregor has to give it to Mi when he notices the other clone's eyes stutter a bit at her clevage. Jaing, being male, falls right into Mi's trap and smiles.

"Always nice to meet friends of Gregor's. Though I'll admit I didn't think he had any before."

"Yeah, well times change." Answers Thena.

She's gotten over her surprise enough to be prickly again Gregor notes. He hopes that's not a bad thing. Mi seems to have decided to make sure it's not by being distracting. She bounces just a little on the balls of her feet, craning her neck to make it seem like she's trying to see into the diner. It works. Jaing's nicely distracted and turns to usher Mi inside. Gregor takes a moment to whisper to Thena.

"You okay?"

She nods.

"Yeah, sorry. I still think he's a jerk."

Gregor smiles and pecks at her temple.

"He is but try to give him the benefit of the doubt yeah? I think he's got a good reason."

"Yeah...okay." She allows as he steers her into the noisy restaurant.

Kom'rk's holding down a corner booth. The table in front of him's already full of food.

"Starving huh?" Gregor grunts as Kom'rk stands up.

Jaing turns to grin at him around Mi's head.

"Yeah. Ms. Manners here," he says, jerking his chin in Kom'rk's direction "wouldn't let me eat anything until you showed up."

"Thanks Kom'rk." Gregor answers.

" Ba'gedet'ye." He says. "Introduce us?"

"This," Jaing fills in with gusto motioning to Mi, "Is Mi Syung Laar"

Mi smiles and extends her hand. Kom'rk squeezes it and murmurs olarom in a voice about half and octive deeper than his usual tone. Gregor's impressed by his smoothness. Mi seems to like it too, at least she blushes prettily. Gregor steps to one side to introduce Thena but she beats him to it, striding forward to stand beside Mi.

"Thena Kuora." She all but barks.

 

She hesitates a moment before extending a hand. Jaing takes it quickly and shakes it, introducing himself. Kom'rk hastily drops Mi's fingers and gives Thena's a weak shake as well. Jaing's eyeing his brother mischievously. Gregor has no idea what he's about to do but he guesses it's not good. He speaks up quickly to stop it.

 

"So, now that we're all known can we sit down."

"Of course," Kom'rk anwers. "Haili cetare." 

He slides into the booth, leaving a space pointedly between himself and Jaing for Mi. Gregor worries for a moment that she might be scared to be that close to two extra-special commandos but Mi's game as always and plops right down, smiling at each of them. Thena surprises him by sitting on Kom'rk's other side, letting him take the outside seat.

" Mar'e!" Moans Jaing as he falls on the nearest plate of sliders.

There's not much talk for a few minutes as they eat. Though Gregor notices both Nulls giving the women approving looks as they tuck in. Gregor smiles to himself, glad for the first time at their previous lack of food.

Once they've demolished most of the spread and Jaing's ordered dessert silence falls. Gregor tenses and reaches for Thena's hand under the table. Kom'rk breaks the ice.

"So, Mi, it was you that got Gregor off Abafar?"

"Actually," Mi says sweetly, "I was more of the stabilizing thruster. Gregor and Thena were doing pretty well before I got there."

Kom'rk looks a little confused. Gregor could kiss Mi for the white lie.

"Really?" He asks.

"Mmhm," Mi answers. "Simlii's actually Thena's. I've got a forty percent share in her but my girl here is the one who found her."

"Well you keep it flying Mi." Thena pipes up.

Mi beams at her.

"You're sweet Then."

Jaing's starting to fidget again. Gregor thinks maybe he's worried about the whereabouts of his sweets but he's wrong. Jaing fixes Thena with a straight, serious look.

"You know what it means right, being with a clone?"

Gregor winces and squeezes Thena's hand. She squeezes back and fixes eyes with Jaing.

"The same as being with anybody who makes their living fighting I imagine." She answers cooly.

Mi's smile gets bigger. But Jaing's not done.

"Do you know how they make us, clones?"

Thena waivers a little, glancing down at the table.

"I'm not really sciency like that." She grinds out.  
Jaing snorts.  
"Well they make us better at pretty much everything than baseline humans. We're faster and tougher, more loyal too."

"What are trying to tell me?" Thena snaps, skin going pale as her temper flares.

She's locked her eyes back on Jaing's as well. It's a brave show even as she's crushing the feeling out of Gregor's fingers.

"What's your plan when he leaves?"

"Is that relevant?"

"It is if you're planning on stringing him alon--"

"Hey!" Mi barks, startling the table.

"You know, thanks for looking out for Gregor but he seems like a grown man to me. They've already been through this, trust me I got to hear it, a couple of times." She says, voice sharp.

"Yeah and?" growls Jaing.

"And I already told you. We're going to take it as it comes." Gregor growls back.

"I want to hear her say it." Jaing retorts, pointing at Thena. Who out and out hisses at him in response.

Gregor turns to look at Thena so fast he gives himself mild vertigo. She's leaning back in the booth, chin up, skin moon-pale. She looks calm, regal almost. When she speaks her voice is icy.

"While I don't see how this is your business...I'm going to do everything I can to keep this...this relationship between us together. I'm perfectly aware that I won't see him, probably almost ever. I know he might...might not come back at all but that's something I'm going to worry about. Okay with you?"

Kom'rk steps in again, sounding calmer than Jaing but still very grave.

"Do you know that we--he's aging at twice the rate you are?"

"What?" Mi and Thena ask at the same time, both turning to Kom'rk.

Gregor blinks, remembering suddenly. He can barely hear Kom'rk over the blood pounding on his eardrums.  
"We're very efficient you see, grown up in half the time it usually takes for a human."

"And dead in half the time too." Jaing finishes bleakly.

Thena looks at Gregor.

"You didn't tell me that?"

"I...I didn't remember."

"Wait, how old are you?" Mi asks.

"Eleven or twelve standard." Answers Kom'rk.

Thena flushes and flexes her fingers in his hand. Gregor takes her other hand, turning her to face him.

"Thena I didn't remember. I'm sorry."

She's blinking rapidly at him. He's choking on his anger at Kom'rk for just blurtling out something like this, and his fear of what it's going to do to Thena. She clutches his hands again, hard enough to hurt and turns to glare at the Nulls.

"Well how do we fix it?" She asks quietly.

Jaing frowns at her.

"How do we fix what?"

Thena rolls her eyes.

"How do we stop him aging."

"Err..." Kom'rk's looking at Jaing like a lost kid. Jaing's eyes are starting to shine a little with something that Gregor's concerned about.

"We don't know yet." He tells Thena carefully.

He sits back in his chair watching her. Gregor's got the distinct impression that he's waiting for Thena to do something.

"Yet?" She asks and then glances at Gregor, dropping his right hand and giving his left a friendly squeeze.

"That's okay then." She finishes.

Kom'rk's eyebrows shoot up his face.

"What do you mean that's okay?"

"He said yet, so you're working on it."

"We don't have it though, we may never figure it out." Kom'rk answers, sounding almost alarmed.

Thena huffs.

"I thought you were super or at least better in every possible way, right? And there's clones that work in industry elsewhere in the galaxy that age normally aren't there?"

"Yeah," Mi pipes up excitedly.

"Keleda, a client of mine, he was trying to start a clone-manned mining operation in the Northern Hemisphere. He was trying to buy them from Arka-something or other. They were going to be grown up in less than a year but then be able to work for something like forty or fifty years."

"Ergo," Thena adds "there's a way to stop clones aging."

"Exactly." Mi says triumphantly.

Jaing snorts, then coughs, then starts to laugh. Kom'rk manages only to chuckle. Thena looks between the pair of them like they've gone insane. Mi looks a bit nervous. Dessert arrives.

Gregor wonders if Jaing's ordered on of everything on the menu. It certainly looks like it. Jaing subsides into hiccupping giggles as he helps himself to some sort of blue-green pie.

"Okay. I think you can keep her Gregor." He finally manages, happily mashing the pie into a pile of turquoise curd and white whipped topping with his spoon.

"Thank you so much." Gregor adds dryly, wondering if it's appropriate to eat cookies provided by such a pair of chakaar.  
Mi has no qualms now that everyone seems more or less at peace. She proceeds to fix both Gregor and Thena plates of whatever she can reach that Kom'rk and Jaing aren't devouring.

"So", Kom'rk, asks, hastily swallowing a mouthful of fruit crumble, "now that we've covered experimental genetics and established your serene confidence in our genius, where are you ladies off to next?"

 

Thena starts drawing pictures in her melting ice milk leaving Mi to answer.

"Don't know yet. We have a couple of leads on transport jobs but mostly we've been stocking up on things we forgot."

"Like torque stabilizers?" Kom'rk asks innocently.

Mi bats her eyes at him and smiles.

"Just like. And of course food and med-supplies since we kind of had to run for it earlier. It sort of cut our shopping  
opportunities short. But we're done for now, cause the money's all gone. So I hope you weren't planning on going Nemodian on this baby." She says, motioning to the rapidly disappearing food.

Kom'rk blinks a couple of times while Jaing seems to be trying to not snort cream out his nose laughing.

"Tell them everything why don't you?" Thena hisses testily at Mi.

Gregor smiles around his cookie. Jaing gulps his pie in his haste to speak.

"Wait, you're out of cash, really?"

Mi starts to answer but Kom'rk suddenly leans forward and grabs something under the table. Thena jerks forward alarmingly. Gregor grabs for her and pulls. Something pulls back.

 

"There's no need to get violent Ms. Kuora." Kom'rk rumbles dangerously.

Gregor's eyes widen in alarm. He wonders how fast he can get to his pistol.

"I was trying to kick Mi. Sorry." Thena hisses.

"Oh," Kom'rk grins and drops whatever he was holding; Thena's foot evidently.

"She's a bit more to your right." Mi yelps. Thena's got her woman this time around. Gregor rolls his eyes. Jaing clears his throat, adopting a put-upon tone.

"If we're finished?"

He looks at Mi, Kom'rk and Thena in turn. They nod.

"What I was about to say was that I just so happen to be in need of a reliable transport and since we're practically family now I was thinking..."

"No discounts" Thena snaps.

Jaing giggles.

" Jenarar." He purrs.

"What did you call me?"

"It means feisty. It's a good thing." Gregor whispers to her.

She still looks suspicious but nods for Jaing to continue.

"It's just a nice, safe shipment of routine ore to a certain Separatist processing facility."

Gregor bristles.

"That hardly sounds safe. Especially if it's coming from you."

"Doubting Gregor, I'm wounded, really. It's coming from a mining facility on Nod Kartha which is reliably allied with our arthropodial friends."

"Are those the Geon--" Thena asks.

"Geonosians, yeah." Gregor answers her before looking at Jaing.

"Really safe or you safe?"

Thena pulls her hand out of his and shoots him a dirty look.

"I think we should negotiate our own business contract Gregor. How much ore and how much are you paying us?" She asks Jaing.

"Twelve tons and I was thinking five thousand."

"Seven." Mi says. Kom'rk gives her an approving look. Jaing rolls his eyes.

"Six."

"Six and a half." Presses Thena.

"Fine, fine. Six and a half you pirates."

"And we don't kill things. Or do anything that's going to get us in the big one hundred on the bounty hunter's lists." Thena adds quickly.

Mi nods in agreement.

"Yeah, very minimal violence. We want a quiet working life for a change."

"Safe as houses," Jaing assures them.

"Gun and bounty-hunter free houses. You have my word."

"And if he's lying Gregor'll beat the osik out of him." Kom'rk adds cheerfully.

"That will be a great comfort to me if I die," mutters Thena.

"Wonderful, a deal!" Enthuses Mi. "Shall we shake on it like in the vids?"

 

They do. Thena and Mi each shake hands with Jaing. Gregor reaches tentatively for Thena's hand again when she sits back, concerned that she might be angry at him again. She takes it immediately. His chest constricts and warms up. Mi's saying something to Kom'rk. Gregor pulls himself together enough to listen.

 

"--ree time, since we don't have to meet with those other fine gentle-beings, I have always wanted to see the Shadow Port. Would you care to join me?"

Kom'rk's smiling a bit stupidly while Jaing's quite obviously pouting. Gregor's concerned for about four seconds until Mi turns to the other Null with a truly wicked smile.

"What about it Jaing, the more the merrier?"

Jaing blinks, genuinely surprised for a moment. Gregor silently applauds Mi. The Null recovers fast, an equally wicked smile blooming on his face. It's actually rather suave.  
Gregor ruefully wishes he could pull a look like that off. He misses Jaing's response but it's probably charming too, at least Mi seems to think so because she's laughing as she slides out of the booth. Kom'rk drops a pile of cash creds on the table as he follows her.

"Gregor." He says.

Gregor manages not to look guilty for having missed most of what's just happened.

"Kom'rk?"

"We're out tomorrow at ten-hundred hours standard. Meet me Port Hhalic berth 5-1B got it?"

"Copy that." Gregor mutters, throat unexpectedly tight at the prospect of really, truly leaving.

 

He glances at Thena, who's staring at Mi and Jaing laughing by the counter so hard Gregor's certain she's trying not to look at him. Mi must feel Thena's eyes boring holes in the side of her head because she turns to her. Her brassy, excited smile softens into something almost wistful. She leaves Jaing for a moment and comes back to the table, reaching around Gregor to touch Thena's hair.

 

"Don't wait up okay?" She whispers. Thena half-smiles and pushes her friend back toward the Nulls.

"We'll keep a com close by." She answers.

Mi laughs, some of the brass back in her voice.

"Whatever helps you sleep." She winks at Gregor "Or not."

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

They leave the diner together, Mi strolling between Kom'rk and Jaing, Gregor and Thena trailing behind. They're an odd pack; three of them loud, temporarily euphoric with the prospect of a debauched night of Force-alone-knew-what, and a subdued pair clutching hands like younglings lost in the woods. They all five putter to a halt just past the threshold.

 

Mi's bright smile waivers for a moment when she sees Thena's closed expression. She pauses again to hug her friend, whispering something to her so softly Gregor can only hear the hiss of her breath. Thena nods after a moment and clutches Mi tight. The three clones stand awkwardly, watching. They have nothing to say to each other at present.

 

Mi detaches at last and holds her arms open to Gregor. He hesitates for a long second but Mi's persistent. He steps forward and she wraps her arms around his waist, squeezing hard enough to make him wheeze. She doesn't whisper anything to him, just presses a slightly damp cheek against his jaw for a moment and then steps back.

 

Her eyes are a little blue-rimmed but dry and sly grin is pulling at her mouth. She blows a kiss to the quiet pair before skipping back to the Nulls. Kom'rk tries to wrap and arm around her waist only to be brushed off. Jaing offers her his arm and is accepted. Mi says something that makes them laugh as the vanish into the dark and the crowds.

 

Gregor watches them, trying not to think about what the hell he's supposed to do next. He's spent so many of the past thirty eight hours avoiding thinking about this moment that reality's caught him completely flat footed. Is he supposed to have something comforting to say? Is he supposed to sweep Thena up and bridal-carry her back to the ship for a farewell fling? He can't work out how to do either one of those things and now Thena's pulling on his hand. He turns to look at her.

 

"Hey, don't cry in the middle of the street okay? Because that would look weird."

There's no bite to the jibe. Her voice sounds strained. But he smiles anyway.

"Okay, let's get back to Simlii so my unmanly blubbering doesn't embarrass you in public."

She smiles shakily.

"Yeah, sounds good."

 

They stroll back toward the ship, hand in hand. Gregor realizes with an inward start that this is only the third time he's ever been out in public with Thena. It's the first time he's ever done something so openly affectionate as hold her hand. It's an unpleasant surprise to realize how much he likes it. It was a lot easier to think about maintaining a clandestine romance when they'd never really done anything aboveboard. Now that he's getting a taste of what he'll be missing it's troubling.

 

He wonders if this is what Kom'rk and Jaing were trying to warn him about. Is he going to be distracted by this when he's gone? Is Thena going to be embittered by the fact that she can't wander down a street with her man whenever the fancy strikes her? Is this moment of normalcy the beginning of the end?

 

Gregor stops in the middle of the street, trying not to hyperventilate. Thena's pulling at his hand again.

 

"Gregor? Gregor? What's the mat--"

 

He grabs her and kisses her right there on the street; right there for all and sundry to see. He does it because he can. There's nothing that says he can't. There's nothing that says they have to fail either. He came back from the dead for kriff's sake. Screw everyone else expecting them to fall apart because the going's about to be tough.

 

He sets Thena back on her feet. She wobbles a little and braces herself on his chest. It feels fantastic to have her pressed up against him while a half dozen beings grouse and shove by them.

"Uh...wha...hi there." Thena stutters.

 

Gregor grins and bends down to kiss her again, more gently this time. It's still feels like laying out in the warm spring sun though the sky is ashy and a cold wind is whipping out of the southwest. Thena's laughing a little when he pulls back again.

"I...let's get to the ship?" She asks breathily and low and doing bad, bad things to his insides.

"Sounds like a plan." He says, voice gruff in his ears.

He keeps an arm around her shoulders the rest of the way. He keeps pausing momentarily to kiss her hair as they walk. Because he can.

 

They don't fall to the floor of the belly-bay and go at it like lapids as soon as the airlock closes. The floor's kind of filthy and slightly covered in metal shavings from where Mi and Thena have been retrofitting components. It's also freezing in there. With ship systems powered down Simlii's a triangular chuck of hollow metal that conducts cold fantastically well.

 

So before they get to clothes-shedding there's the desperate run to the cockpit to power up basic systems followed by ten minutes of huddling under blankets in Thena's bunk. Gregor wonders if anyone actually has the type of devil-may-care sex that crops up so much on the holonet fictions. He's starting to suspect not but that's not really a problem for him. He thinks he's probably having more fun shivering and swearing through Simlii's interminable warm-up cycle with Thena than he would be if they just fucked each other into the floor at every opportunity.

 

Another bonus of having to live in a world of real people who have real sex is that in vids the undressing is always edited out. Partner A unhooks something. Partner B is shot from behind dropping an article of clothing to the floor and then, suddenly, sex.

 

Letting Thena tug his jacket off his shoulders while she simultaneously tries not to stop kissing him is so much better. Her fumbling with the closures of his body-glove is better still. Especially as each moth-light brush of her skin against his sends delicious shocks along his spine.

 

He decides not to help her get it all the way off him once she's finally undone the front clasps. He only allows her to pull him to his feet. She hisses and swears he's so lazy that he doesn't deserve sex but he knows her. Thena's as bad as he is once she gets going and there is no way she'd walk out on the promise of orgasms.

 

He tries not to giggle too obviously as she yanks the tight material off his arms and along his torso. But his ribs shake with repressed mirth and Thena's glowering at him only makes it worse. He can barely stand for laughing as Thena all but chews off the buttons on his trousers before struggling to work the suit over his hips.

 

She gets her revenge though, in the best possible way. The minute the suit and trousers are far enough down; hung up around his ankles. She drops to her knees in front of him and gets her mouth around him. His laughter morphs into a strangled moan as she slides her mouth down the length of him.

 

The air is still cool enough that the inside of her mouth feels molten against his skin. Her tongue presses along the vein on the underside of his member and his knees threaten to buckle. He feels Thena chuckle. He feels it. It vibrates against him. One of his hands slams backwards into the curve of the bulkhead in an attempt to keep himself upright. Thena makes another sound in her throat, a disappointed little growl that hums across his head. He chews his lips raw to keep from moaning.

 

She inhales slowly through her nose and does something with her throat and it's indescribable. He can feel the back of her soft palate massaging him as she swallows. Her lips drag rough and silky at once across the nerve heavy skin between the base of his cock and his sack. And then she opens her mouth just enough for her tongue to come back into play.

 

The combination of her mouth and throat and lips on his shaft mixes dizzily with the stuttering, wet-velvet drag of the tip of her tongue along the base of his sac. It's too much to process. His knees give out completely and he collapses to the bunk.

 

She follows him down. He can't quite believe that she's able to do that. He feels a distant jolt of guilt when the force of his ass hitting the mattress jostles his cock in her throat and she gags a bit. She lifts off him slightly. He starts to make motions to pull back, concerned about his lack of control.

 

Thena's not having it though. She sets her teeth against him, just the ends of them, light as breath. It makes him feel vulnerable in the most fantastically obscene way. He quakes, right down to the soles of his feet. It rubs him against her teeth a little harder. His eyes roll up in his head. He feels her smile.

 

And then she really gets down to the business of making him sorry for laughing. It's been awhile but the girl's obviously got a good memory. She uses all of his favorite moves to drive him mad.

 

She rolls her lips up and back down from base to head keeping the suction even until she's right up by the cap. Then she alternates between deep suction and swirling her tongue over it. She does these things randomly, building up a rhythm between one and the other only to shift suddenly until he's panting.

 

She also occasionally throws in those teeth as well. Gregor's heard that some men don't like that but he kind of thinks that's more because their partners are doing it wrong. There is nothing at all wrong with the way Thena lets her teeth glide oh so gently along the underside, pausing now and again to compress the vein carefully.

 

It's been too long. He's almost too far gone for the thought within minutes, seconds really. It's happening too fast. He wants to take more time at this. Wants to do so much more than just rut away in her mouth like an adolescent.

 

He tries to force his thick tongue, which seems to have glued itself to the roof of his mouth, to do something useful. Thena runs her cool fingers along his inner thighs, defeating him. He pries his eyes open in an attempt to regain some composure. The sight of her cap of black hair bobbing below his waist tears a desperate whimper from his throat that might, almost sound like her name.

 

Thena must be feeling merciful because she leans back, letting his cock slide free. The saliva coating him cools rapidly, spreading gooseflesh up and down his torso. Thena rocks back on her heels and looks up at him through her lashes, mouth shining wet and wearing a wicked smile.

 

“You okay there Gregor?” She asks thickly.

He doesn’t bother trying for word. Instead grabbing her and dragging her into his lap to show her just how okay he is.

“Ow, hey! You’ve got all your clothes on.” He yelps as the rough material of her trousers abrades several inches of sensitized skin.

 

Thena just grins. He mutters dark things about female treachery as he paws clumsily at what seem to be about four dozen buttons that she has on her ridiculous shirt. He snarls and sets his hands on either side of the collar only to feel Thena’s firm grip on his wrists. He looks at her, noting the serious expression on her face.

 

“This is one of exactly three shirts I own Gregor. You rip it and you’re sleeping in your own bunk.”

He blinks, trying to jump start his brain. Finally something not completely gummed up by repressed lust reminds him of how to nod. Thena gently disentangles his hands and starts to stand. He grabs at her hips, fingers digging lusciously into her ass, and yanks her back forward. She laughs breathlessly and kisses his nose.

“Baby.” She purrs, in a disconcertingly accurate Mi impression “you should maybe deal with your own issues first before you tear off my clothes.”

Gregor frowns. She motions downward. He looks at his boots, which he’s still wearing; and at the ridiculous looking puddle of cloth around his ankles.

“Oh.” He rumbles.

 

Thena giggles. She giggles so hard it's difficult for her to get off of him. Gregor suddenly understands what she must have felt when he laughed about her struggles with his clothes.

 

He resolves twice over to get her back as he clumsily hauls his boots off and works to pry off the body glove and trousers. He barks out a triumphant laugh as he kicks the tangle away. He fully intends to jump up, grab Thena, toss her on the bunk and make her beg forgiveness.

 

But Thena’s also in the process of taking of the rest of her clothes; the very end of the process. He can only stare at the way she slides her clingy, blue undershorts down her legs. She tries to kick them off, swears when they catch on her still bandaged foot and bends over to pull them off. Gregor tries not to swallow his tongue.

 

He does manage to get Thena onto the bed then. How he does it he can’t quite remember. He comes back to himself in a tangle of pale limbs and Thena’s breath. It smells like the spice from the fruit pie. Her tongue is still sweet with residual sugar. Her skin is cool and soft; as soft as he remembers it, softer. It's mind boggling that anyone can feel so perfectly proportioned under his hands. He wants to touch every dip and curve of her to see if his fingers fit each one.

 

He'll do that later. Some time when Thena isn't moaning and writhing quiet so enticingly under him. She twists a little too hard suddenly, catching him in the stomach with her pelvis as she moves. He stops dead as she hisses in pain.

 

"Careful." She whispers.

 

He looks down, libido ebbing rapidly. The left side of her ribs is spangled grey-yellow with bruises. There's a bluish line that probably exactly matches one of the counters in Beerkin's kitchens runs diagonally from mid-rib to belly. He feels suddenly queasy and sits up.

"Hey, hey where are you going?" Thena asks, sounding both worried and sad.

She follows the line of his gaze.

"Yeah, it's not the most attractive look is it?" Her voice goes soft as she asks; trailing off to almost nothing at the end.

She hangs her head, hiding behind her hair again.

"I mean...if you're....we don't have to..."

 

He knows she doesn't mean to twist a verbal knife in his gut. But her insecurity kills him all the same. He leans down slowly, keeping his weight braced on his hands on either side of her head. Her eyes are huge and deep, deep black as she watches him. He holds himself a inch above her, arms at right angles. His left elbow's pressed hard against the bulkhead but he ignores the pain.

 

He's not smooth like Kom'rk or charming like Jaing. He doesn't have something to say that will make everything better. He kisses her instead. He starts slow, just a gentle press of his mouth against hers until she breathes out. Then he goes deeper; stroking his tongue along first the upper lip and then the lower; letting it stutter a little on the slightly chapped skin there. When a soft, throaty sound opens her mouth he slides his tongue in after her inhaled breath. He strokes her tongue with his, explores the shape of her teeth, draws her back to let her delve into his mouth.

 

She's shivering by the time he presses himself back up an inch, though the room's now almost warm and her skin's hot. He smiles down at her, deliberately. She smiles back so brilliantly his arms quiver a bit. She sits up a little to twine her arms around his shoulders and neck; pulling him back down. He goes but rolls slightly so that he's pressed against the bulkhead with one hand free.

 

It's not ideal, he'd much rather use both his hands to play with both of her breasts, but the close, full body contact is pretty great. The way he can feel her moaning and gasping into his mouth when he runs his fingers along her nipple is possibly better. She's trashing a little bit as he plays her but he's careful not to bump her ribs again. He just strokes and tugs and kisses her over and over, as much as he likes.

 

"Gre...Gregor!" Thena finally grinds out, wrenching her mouth off of his.

"Hmm?" He takes the momentary detachment to examine the curve of her neck, strategizing where he'd like to go next.

"Don't tease."

He gives her a sideways look, notes how pale she is; how much like huge and opaque her eyes are getting and smiles.

"Oh, okay. If you want."

 

He grabs her ass again, squeezing a few more times than is strictly necessary, and hauls her up a little; simultaneously sliding himself down the bunk so that he's eye level with her chest. She grips his shoulders lightly as he moves but seems to be letting him take the lead. That's good because he's got plans for her.

 

He pulls her lovely, puckered nipple into his mouth as soon as he's sure he's got a decent grip on her torso that's not pinching any injuries. She gasps and arches backwards, head slipping a little on the edge of the bunk. He hauls her closer with his left hand to make sure she doesn't thrash straight off the mattress and keeps licking and sucking away. Thena's gone completely incoherent, groaning and gasping almost continuously. While she's distracted he slips his free hand along her legs, encouraging her to toss one up over his hips. She does it awkwardly, like she's not quite paying attention to what's happening below the level of his tongue on her.

 

He eases up on her breast for a moment, just brushing kisses against it. She whines unhappily. He runs two fingers along her wet slit. Thena gasps raggedly and arches again, driving her nipple back into his mouth. He bites down lightly and teases her clit. She shudders; keens and hauls her leg up toward his ribs to give him room to work.

 

He takes the hit and presses his middle finger into her, rolling skin near her clit with his thumb. Thena's pulse ramps up so fast he can actually feel her heart beat against his lips as he continues to play with her breast. Or possibly it's just his own blood racing ever more frantically as Thena sighs and whimpers and pushes herself into his hands and mouth wantonly.

 

He slips his index finger into her as well and her hips buck him into the wall with not inconsiderable force. She's arched so far back now that he can't get to her chest anymore. Instead he contents himself with watching her face contort with pleasure; trying to sear the memory of her in these moments into his brain. He rubs circles on her clit with his thumb, wanting to see what that does. Her eyes snap open; void-black and wild.

 

"Gregor, Force. Please." She moans.

Her voice destroys him. He's back to feeling out of control in the best possible way. He scrambles up the mattress. She jerks her right leg out from under him quickly. Too quickly because she suddenly slides alarmingly toward the edge of the bunk. She steadies herself with a squeak, putting her right foot flat on the floor.

 

He fumbles and nearly trips off the bed as she scrabbles over her head for something. The raging lust almost stops him from catching the foil package she clumsily pushes into his hands. It takes both of them to get the condom on. Him to open the wrapper on the fourth try, her to get it right way up and finally him to slide it on. Thena tries to help with that too but he won't let her. He's fairly sure he'll come right there if she touches him.

 

He reaches for her hips, lifting and guiding her until she's securely settled against him. He kneels, watching her squirm infinitesimally in anticipation. He tries to count to some enormous number to regain his composure. It becomes a futile exercise when she suddenly opens her eyes and stretches to run her right leg up his back almost to his shoulder.

 

With a ragged breath and a silent hope that it's not too fast he lifts himself to her entrance and pushes in. She her spine curves backward again, leg hard across his back, head thrown to one side, neck taught. He tries to go slow but it's so, so good. Her cunt is a thousand times hotter than her mouth; it's silky and sticky and smells like sharp, salty heaven.

 

He groans and drops forward on his hands to thrust deeper. She locks her legs over him, hips following him up and forward. She's bracing herself against him, legs around his waist, hands over his shoulders, weight supported only on her shoulders. It can't be comfortable but she seems too far gone to care. He is too. All he can do is push and buck while she rocks time.

 

He wants to make this good for her but she's undoing him. The length of time since they've done this, his residual fear that they'd never do it again, the creeping worry about the future. It's all mixing into a heady cocktail of emotions and hormones that's ensuring this encounter is going to be over shortly.

 

He moans in frustration at the thought and somehow, miraculously, Thena understands. One of her hands falls from his shoulder to slither its way down between them. She does what he can't, fingers fast and sure. He can feel them brushing against him on each in-out glide. Then she gasps and goes rigid suddenly. Every muscle inside her seems intent on clenching down on him; holding him in place. His hind brain is equally stubborn and insists that he push through the pressure, drag his way out and then do it all again.

 

He can't hear the sounds Thena's making anymore over everything exploding inside him. Somewhere deep down he's a little surprised at how noisy they're being but he can't see that as a bad thing at the moment. Nothing's bad right now. There's just the perfect dual motion of the pair of them and the flawless peak. And then there's a beautiful, dark silence where he's without identity or thought.

 

He comes back to his pleasantly tingly body after some unknowable stretch of time. His head's pillowed bellow Thena's breasts and she's playing absently with his hair. He smiles into the soft flesh of her belly and lets his hands slide up the back of her ribs, tracing the padded bones there. She purrs and arches up a little. He presses his face into her stomach to kiss her. She wiggles tiredly and sighs. It's a happy sound so he continues. Suddenly something under his mouth makes a noise like a caged gotkur. Thena freezes. Gregor looks up at her quizzically, chin resting on her stomach. The sound comes again. It vibrates against his throat.

 

"Is that your stomach?" He asks.

She goes white. He bursts out laughing. Her stomach rumbles again and he's having trouble breathing between fits of laughter. Thena's got her hands over her face in embarrassment but he can feel her laughing too.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry." She's muttering.

He flicks her elbow to get her attention. She drops her hands to look at him, clearly mortified.

"You got more food right? Along with the engine parts?"

She nods.

"Well maybe we can take this party to the galley."

Her stomach gives an affirmative hum. She grimaces.

"Sweet Force this is like the least romantic thing ever." She grumbles. He's laughing again, delighted to be able to laugh like this with her.

"I like a woman with an appetite." He reassures her, sitting up.

He offers her a hand up and, after another moment of embarrassed squirming, she takes it.

 

  
He makes them protein board sliders for old time's sake. Though since they're trying to be frugal with the supplies there's only two and no sauces. The quality of the protein and they're earlier exertions, however, make everything taste wonderful. They wash up together, or he does while Thena rubs herself on his back. It's much, much better than any day he'd ever had at Power Sliders.

 

Also for old time's sake, once everything's cleaned and stowed, Gregor backs Thena into a wall and works her up with his fingers until she shudders and thrashes. Mi's left them a box of condoms on the table with a note about appropriate sex venues versus where we eat. Out of respect, and an increasing difficulty with keeping his legs under him, Gregor sits on the bench that runs behind the dining table. Thena wedges herself in on top of him for another round.

 

He lasts longer this time, coaxing her through another two orgasms before finally giving in to his own. They're both sweaty and boneless-tired by the time they're done. Thena insists they shower before bed, citing the fact that she's both always wanted to do that and this may be her last opportunity for awhile. That's a sobering thought but Thena's naked enthusiasm, and general nakedness, helps him push it aside long enough to make it into the tiny shower.

 

It's almost impossible for the pair of them to fit. They get water everywhere and Thena nearly falls trying to rinse soap out of his hair. They manage somehow, even if the thoroughness of their washing is in doubt. They at least rinse off the sweat.

 

He falls asleep almost before they're both settled in Thena's bunk. He had wanted to spend more time cuddling but there's only so much he can manage in one day. He'd probably have slept till morning had it not been for Mi banging up the ramp, blind drunk near dawn. She calls their names repeatedly from the bay, voice echoing through the hollow spaces of the ship. Thena winces.

 

"Wow. That's not quite what I wanted to wake up to." She mutters darkly.

Gregor huffs and pulls her back against him.

"So pretend you're not awake."

Thena wriggles luxuriously and rolls over to press her face into his chest.

"I like the way you think."

Mi's not buying their act. She slaps the bulkhead Thena's bunk shares with the main bay. Gregor flinches at the reverberation.

"Haar'chak, I guess we should see if she's okay, before she finds something else to make noise with."

Thena groans a protest. Gregor smiles and kisses the part of her hair.

"Come on Ten'ika, just for a bit. Long enough to get her to bed and then we'll come back."

She groans again but starts to sit up. They still take their time untangling limbs and finding clothing, neither one overly eager to face the reality of the morning. Just as he's reaching for the door release Thena puts a hand on his arm.

"What?" He starts to ask.

 

She stops him with a kiss; a long, slow, tender kiss that makes his eyes flutter shut. A kiss that's obviously meant to tell him things she's still not quite ready to say. He's not sure he's ready to say or hear them either so he kisses her back, letting his body imply for him. They pull back reluctantly. She smiles at him; the creeping, uneven smile that he loves more than he's comfortable thinking about. He smiles back at her and hopes with all that he is that everything's going to be okay.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

Ten hundred hours on Llanic is pitch dark and freezing. Gregor's morose so the weather suits him just fine. It seems to suit Kom'rk as well. He's flinching a bit at every loud noise and seems loath to take off his helmet.

 

Gregor doesn't ask what went down between he, Jaing and Mi last night. Mi turned up at Simlii's berth two hours ago looking exhausted but chipper. She banged up the new engine parts in no time flat and gave Gregor a sloppy, liquor scented kiss good-bye before staggering off to her bunk. Thena's face had been vacillating between amused and slightly disgusted as she watched her friend weave down the hall.

 

"Where's Jaing?" Gregor asks, breath white in the dark cold.

"He's going over the last details of the shipment with his contacts and then waiving it to the girls."

"He's not going with them?"

"You wanted safe didn't you?"

Kom'rk stretches his back.

"No, my beloved sibling is off to do whatever it is he does in the Bakura sector. Speaking of beloved where's your woman? Not coming out for a tender good-bye?"

"We said our good-byes privately."

Kom'rk snorts.

"Oh well, too bad. Jaing wanted pictures of the poignant, ship-side farewell; for blackmail purposes I imagine."

"Maybe another time."

"Maybe. Is that your kit?" Kom'rk asks, motioning to the crate.

"It is."

"Well pick it up soldier I'm not a bell-boy."

Gregor hefts the case.

"So where are we going Kom'rk?"

"Don't know yet. We'll see what's come over the coms that can keep us busy for a few days."

"And then I'll hook up with Jaing."

"Actually I think Prudii was complaining about being lonely recently. I'll ask him if he wants to babysit."

 

Gregor rolls his eyes and says nothing. This is not the army life he expected at all. Still, he thinks as he changes out of his civilian gear in the cramped back bay of Kom'rk's tiny ship, it's better than Abafar. He's got his purpose, his meaning. Even if that does come with a few extra aggravations. Nothing's perfect. He wonders if it's too early to write something to Thena.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes on the Mandalorian
> 
> Su cuy'gar: Hello (So you're still alive)
> 
> Ni su'cuyi, gar kyr'adyc, ni partayli, gar darasuum: I'm alive but you are dead. I remember you so you are enternal
> 
> Nu kyr'adyc, shi taab'echaaj'la :Not gone, merely marching far away
> 
> Gar Serim: You're Right, That's it
> 
> Aruetiise: Outsider (sometimes traitor)
> 
> Ba'gedet'ye: You're welcome
> 
> olarom: Pleased to meet you
> 
> Haili cetare: Eat up (Fill your boots).
> 
> Mar'e: Finally


End file.
